Right Brain Work

My first degree was in Computer Science and Engineering, my second an MBA (please don’t think any less of me for that). I say this because my career was spent in the semiconductor business and as a result I developed and honed analytical skills. There is a rigor in engineering not often encountered elsewhere. It requires constantly learning new skills and topics, critical thinking, and numeracy.

Within engineering and the work I did there are some creative outlets, most of which I found in problem solving. Something I relished.

If you are familiar with the work of Ian McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary) then you understand his research on why we have a divided brain. It is subtly different from the conventional views on the left right brain split. He moves beyond the left-side is analytical and the right creative view to thinking more about how the two halves perform tasks or do things.

In his parlance The Master is the right brain and His Emissary is the left brain. The right brain looks at the totality of a subject with a full integration of the senses while the left brain is more detail-oriented and is tasked with work the right brain is incapable of.

Ian goes on to posit that our hyper-rational and analytical modern world puts the left brain in charge because we value deep technical analysis while losing perspective on the whole of reality. He goes on to say that the woes of the modern world and its people are reminiscent of patients with right brain injury.

To be sure his attempt in his second volume to diagnose the ills of our society based on over-dominance or reliance on left brain functions is controversial. It does, to me, bear understanding more about this relationship.

This is where the topic intersects my creative journey. I am trying to discover and rely more on my right brain. My career was spent in the left brain space and now that it is over I am dedicating more time to the right. I know now for instance that I spent a surprising amount of time in my right brain for my work.

I lack a concrete plan (that would be very left brain) but I am keeping the idea in my awareness and in being intentional about exploring the topic.

I will be interested to see where it leads me…