How to catch an insight ?
Sometimes you can struggle with a problem for a long time, and then the solution appears. For example, let’s say you haven’t known which team to bet on at Cricket Betting 360 for a long time. But suddenly, a couple of seconds later, you know what to do. It’s called insight.
We tell you how to make sudden insights come to you more often.
What is insight
Insight is a sudden insight that helps one find a solution to a problem—synonyms of the word insight – insight, revelation, comprehension. Usually, we try to solve a problem analytically with the help of logical reasoning. Then we come to a solution consciously. However, the peculiarity of insight is that it is arrived at unconsciously – insights are not preceded by conscious brain activity.
Often insights come when a person is engaged in a simple and monotonous activity, such as cleaning or taking a walk. When insight catches up with a person, they have a joyful feeling, which psychologists call “aha-perception.”
The term is used today in psychology and business environments, especially marketing, advertising, and business analytics. An insight in business is a thought or combination of data that helps a company find the best solution that can affect the entire course of business.
Marketing insight, or consumer insight, is information gained through research that can be used to increase sales. Insight helps a company realize what a customer wants and offer them the best solution to their problem with a service or product – and win the consumer’s attention over the competition.
How Insight is Different from inside
Insight should not be confused with inside, although the words sound similar. Both terms have to do with the information. Insight is the solution to a problem inside, while insider information is information for internal use in an organization, not available for disclosure to outsiders. Thus, the publication Business Insider title promises readers a lot of “inside” information about the business – that is, insights. And in this article, we promise to show you how to get insights – unexpected insights that help you solve problems.
How insight works
The term “insight” appeared in psychology. It was first used by Wolfgang Köhler, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, in his work on the behavior of monkeys in 1917. He conducted the following experiment: locked monkeys in a cage and put bananas outside. The primates saw the food but could not get to it. After some time, after wandering around the cell, they decided to take a stick to pull the fruit to themselves. It turned out that humans could behave similarly.
Insight and Gestalt
Insight is related to the concept of gestalt. A gestalt is a holistic picture that our brain seeks to see. For example, when we look at a picture of a bicycle, we see it as a whole, not separately from wheels, frame and handlebars. It is a holistic perception.
It’s not just pictures that the brain wants to see holistically. It is also essential for us to “close” the problems and tasks that we set for ourselves. When we decide to work on a problem, we “open” the gestalt. After that, the brain needs to see the matter through to completion and the gestalt closed.
An unclosed gestalt will constantly remind us of itself, preventing us from completely forgetting the problem, even if we decide not to work on it anymore. And such a gestalt will force the brain to work in private mode, even when one is desperate to find an answer. This kind of work is precisely what can lead to insight.
Insight and neurons
Psychologists at Northwestern University in Chicago have found that during conscious attempts to solve a problem and at the moment of insight, the same part of the brain is active in a person- the anterior superior temporal gyrus of the right hemisphere. Moreover, it is more active during insight than during analytic problem-solving. Scientists also discovered that a sudden burst of high-frequency neural activity occurs in this same brain area shortly before insight.
Examples of Insights
- In science. A classic example of insight occurs in a treatise by the Roman architect Vitruvius. It describes the legend of how Archimedes determined what material the crown of the king of Syracuse, Giron II, was made of. For the calculations, the scientist needed to calculate the crown’s volume, but it wasn’t easy to do so because of its complex shape. The insight came when Archimedes immersed himself in the tub and poured some water on the floor. He realized that the volume of water displaced was equal to the importance of the body immersed in the water. Then, he shouted the famous “Eureka!” which means “found” in Greek. For now, being able to measure the crown’s volume, he could calculate whether it had impurities in its composition. According to legend, the height was not pure gold.
- Business. In the late 1990s, Ford released an updated Ford Mustang. Buyers were dissatisfied with the novelty – they reported that the new car was less powerful than previous models. The engine of the new car was more powerful. The company conducted a study and found that consumers “felt” the car’s power physically when they felt the car’s vibration while driving and heard the engine’s roar. The researchers realized that the Mustang’s appearance didn’t match the customers’ notions of power. Then the company decided to redesign the car to make it look fast – and it worked. “This car has a sense of movement, even when standing still,” Richard Hutting said about the new car, head of Ford’s design department.
- In marketing. In 2017, streaming service Spotify found a new way to use user data. Previously, it had only been used for internal analytics. But in the 2017 New Year’s Eve ad campaign, Spotify used collected data to tell customers about themselves for the first time. The app included an infographic that explained to the user how and what music they had listened to over the past year. This move turned out to be highly successful: people enjoy getting personalized information about themselves and sharing it with others.
Stages of the emergence of insight
Gathering information
A person faces a problem, does not find a solution, and the brain forms an unclosed gestalt. For example, a journalist is tasked with writing material on the history of clothing worn during the Spanish flu of the early twentieth century and other viral diseases. The author encounters a problem:
- There is too much information.
- It takes too long to find it.
- It is unclear how to structure it.
The author decides to postpone the task for a while.
The incubation period.
It may take a lot of time. He gets distracted and does not think about the task; he may forget it. However, the brain still “secretly” continues to work. The author of the article forgets about it and begins to engage in other projects, go out and socialize with friends.
Insight
The most pleasant moment. A person suddenly has an insight. This state comes suddenly and lasts a fraction of a second. As a result, a person experiences bright emotions and mood elevation. And then there’s the relief of the task at hand. It seems to him that understanding came out of nowhere.
Sometimes an insight solves the task in its entirety, but there are also small insights – when a person receives an understanding not of the entire task but of a part of it. This way, small gestalts are closed – until the task is completely solved.