Memory lapses aren’t a bug; they are a path to originality

Forgetting is frustrating — often maddening. What was the passcode I made once and never used until I had to use it, just to unlock my phone? Off to the Apple Not-So-Genius Bar I trudge. Who was the former McCombs student I bumped into at LAX, whose face I recognized yet whose name was just … not there anymore? Why can’t I remember the lilting Alicia Keys refrain on “Empire State of Mind,” even after hearing it six gajillion times? I knew these things once; I know I knew. But they’ve tumbled through trapdoors in my brain. Grrrrrrrrrrr. For me and for all of us, surely forgetting is the enemy.

Science in the 20th century would have agreed, resoundingly. Understanding and encouraging more effective ways to actively store, organize, search, and retrieve mental information rather than passively let it go was a central theme of cognitive research. If our own neural storage bank was as well-structured and consistently available as a computer’s, clearly life would be better.

Science in the 21st century has changed its tune, or at least has riffed on a jazzy contrapuntal to the melody. Forgetting can be, and often is, our friend. Advice to “forget the last play” or “be a goldfish” (“Ted Lasso” adult language warning) highlights the resilience that accompanies intentionally letting go of the negative emotion surrounding the memory of prior mistakes. Acknowledge a setback briefly. Then, wipe the slate clean and look forward to what’s next before rumination starts and self-confidence nosedives.

Forgetting can be especially helpful in the realm of creative ideation, including the generation of Big Ideas^tm for business school research. Creative contributions to any realm are universally defined as thoughts, concepts, actions, or products that are both novel and useful. Sharp expertise and deep knowledge in one’s area, knowing what has worked, build the foundation on which usefulness is defined. That same expertise and knowledge, however, comprise the a priori assumption base that can undercut creative idea production because they compete with divergent thinking. Coming up with a new idea challenges that assumption base, which is tougher when we’re entrenched in an old-idea environment. Chris Farley’s “remember when” sketches are funny precisely because the old environment overwhelms his brain so quickly, and subsequent conversations become difficult and uncomfortably vapid.

In life and in science, sometimes it’s better to forget.

Creating by remembering some things triggers a neurochemical process that simultaneously inhibits the recall of other things. Research shows that creating by forgetting those other things is an active process. That is, we can train ourselves to forget the fixation on what’s outdated and unwanted, so that novel thoughts can happen.

Simple practices rooted in this insight are worth trying for your own Big Ideas^tm. Incubate your creativity by taking brain-wiping rest breaks from focused problem-solving. Switch back and forth regularly from that same focus to unrelated tasks. Physically move to a fresh context. Talk to a colleague who’s outside your area. All of these help us fuggedaboutit. In a good way.

Doug Chung’s work illustrates exactly this point. He questions the orthodoxy of aspirational goal-setting for salespeople, by creatively speculating about a mechanism that neutralizes its benefits (the “ostrich effect”). He then demonstrates means to correct it. Leqi Liu shows in a clever way, having AI question its own assumption base by supplementing its training allows it to have more productive collaborations with users. Anticipating what users don’t know (and perhaps would forget) is the key.