Brainstorming is an interesting process. You need to be fast, and willing to throw out an idea, both in terms of deciding an idea is garbage, and throwing one out for experimentation. One way to handle this is with dry erase paint. That might seem like an approach for a parent with disruptive kids who like to draw on the walls, but there’s a bigger pool of people who use this paint. It’s easy to assume the doctor and scientist writing frantically on a dry erase board to figure out an equation, or to work on a diagnosis. This is obviously just Television right?
No serious doctor or scientist would, for example no one involved in a complex, heady field, like neuroscience would cover their office floor to ceiling in dry erase paint right?
David Eagleman, however did just that. The walls are entirely coated in dry erase paint, as are the tables, and even the coffee mugs. Dry erase paint lets the scientists work on ideas collaboratively, take a step back to see how it all fits together, and lets them easily erase a mistake without added cost or pain.
It’s appropriate that it’s neuroscientists who take this approach as well. Neuroscience, for those not up on “Sciencese”, is the study of the brain and how we develop thoughts and ideas. Knowing that the brain cam be fooled into focusing on small details only, and that sometimes good ideas come from random places and at random times they embrace this fact by allowing their researchers to add thoughts and ideas anywhere at any time.
By lowering the cost of a bad idea it allows people to explore any idea more freely. Good ideas sometimes die before they can take life and grow into the eventual idea. For people on the bleeding edge of science and research there needs to be a willingness to be absolutely wrong. Fear of not knowing something or being wrong are the enemies of the scientific process. If you work only within what you know and are certain of you will never learn anything new. Scientists, and other forms of researchers, must be willing to be wrong, and having the ability to throw ideas out more easily is vitally important to the process of discovery and advancement. Dry erase paint is a part of what makes Eagleman a scientist on the cutting edge of discovery, his wide open approach to science. His approach was unique enough to land a spot on Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s PBS show. For anyone who needs to work on the edge of what they know and don’t know (not just science mind you) having the ability to freely write then erase an idea is a beautiful thing.
You don’t have to be a cutting edge neuroscientist to experience the advantages of dry erase paint. Anyone who wants to be able to work with others, or just put their ideas somewhere big and obvious so they’re easy to see and easy to work on will love Walls Love Ink. Wink offers a clear finish that turns any wall into a dry erase wall. You can find them online at website.
