When the Right’s Gone – What’s Left?
I have been struggling to help my daughter Lily with her 4th grade homework. Not entirely because my math skills are tested in the process but because I lack patience. Lily has a familiar inability to focus on the details of her homework and as a fellow Right Brain thinker, I haven’t been much help.
What I found is that while we prefer a right or left brain approach to processing information, we can overcome this tendency. As right brainers, Lily and I naturally process the whole question leaving the details for last. We have to consciously line up the pieces of information in a logical order, where a left brain thinker would do this automatically.
Lily (and I) tend to start with the answer first and work backwards. This is impossible in situations where we must process new information. We need to know Why first, then it becomes easier to determine How. Now that we start each homework exercise with a review of the entire project, Lily is finding it less difficult to find a starting point.
I have lived my life in the big picture – starting with visions and working backwards to determine execution and viability. It’s not the outline but the outcome that comes to me easily. But, more and more I appreciate the lefty inside me who can approach conclusions after lining up the facts. To be sure you are right, engage what you have left.
