Here’s a riddle: A man goes to a courthouse with an urgent message for a lawyer, who is in a meeting on floor 19, which cannot be interrupted. Five of seven elevators are out of service, and there is a 45 minute long line to get on an elevator. The man resolves to walk up the stairs due to the urgency of this message. When he gets into the stairwell, he realizes that starting on floor 4 all the doors to the floors are locked due to security reasons. Suddenly, he realizes what he must do, and five minutes later, using the elevator, he was on floor 19. How did he do it?
Hint: The answer to this riddle requires counter-intuitive thinking.
Counter-intuitive thinking is one of the higher-order thinking skills that is difficult to teach, and usually arises when confronted with a real problem. It is probably much easier for the person in the riddle to figure out a solution than for the person reading the riddle. As for why that might be, the first likelihood is that the person’s mental resources are directed to searching for a solution out of limited possibilities. The mind processes through the possibilities, and will hit upon a solution, or not.
Interestingly, the person in the riddle is also in motion during the problem-solving process. This raises a significant possibility that movement of the most basic type – walking while problem-solving – can improve mental outcomes. Even the act of writing, which requires motion, can help raise this type of counter-intuitive thought.
The importance of counter-intuitive cannot be understated. There are countless stories of people facing serious challenges who are able to figure out a counter-intuitive solution that actually saves their life. A famous such story is of a forest firefighter who was able to survive a forest fire by burning a circle of earth around him and taking cover as the firewall passed; the firewall was unable to pass his burnt land and so he survived as the fire went around him. One common theme running through these stories is that those overcoming some sort of odds are thinking about their limited options while in the motions of trying to save themselves or others.
Counter-intuitive thinking is also a source of creativity and innovation. For visionaries like Steve Jobs or Jim Henson, both were able to think in opposition to adult expectations and conformity and see the world in a child-like way, which sparked Apple and the Muppets, cultural icons beloved and understood by adults and children alike. Thinking about the moments of the best counter-intuitive thoughts that you, your child, or your students have ever done will help you understand from what and where such thinking emerges.
As for the riddle, the man got out of the stairwell on the 3rd floor, caught an elevator down, stayed in it, and went back up to the 19th floor, delivering the urgent message in the nick of time.
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