Use the Menemen Technique to Combine Intuition with Intellect

What can we do to enhance our ability to find creative solutions to complex problems? In an earlier Believe Show, we talked to Nil Demircubuk about using intuition. We invited her back to hear more. This is the world premiere description of her Menemen technique, a way to use intuition and intellect together intentionally. Nil Demircubuk is a coach and writer who teaches people how to use intuition effectively.

To watch the entire discussion, including an example of the Menemen approach in action, click here or play the embedded video below.

Senia: What do you believe to be true that others may not believe?

Nil: I believe that intuition and intellect are not competitors. We can use them wisely together. The two together are more powerful than either on their own.

Many people believe that we should rely only on the intellect. There are also people that believe we should just go by intuition, trusting it no matter what. My belief is in the middle.

Senia: How did you come to your belief that intuition and intellect are partners?

Nil: I came to the belief by practicing. I tried using intellect and intuition together many, many ways. I was also intellectually curious about intuition. In my reading, I found sources that praise intuition and others that kill it. In some sources, people think intuition means snap judgments or uneducated guesses, which are not necessarily based on intuition.

Be open to the idea that your intuition may be off. Run your intuition through the filter of your intellect. If it’s a simple situation and the cost of being wrong is small, you could rely on your intuition alone. But in general, run what you get from intuition through your intellect.

You may wonder how you got an intuition. One way to become more aware is to trace intuitions back to their sources. For example, you’re just about to start a work project, and you find yourself thinking about the rusty paint cans in the garage. Here’s how the trace might look: “When I thought about that project, I thought about an old project the team had worked on, and that made me think about old things in the garage, and then I pictured the rusty paint cans.” When practicing intuition, it can be helpful to trace an intuitive thought back to the root.

Senia: What are the best ways to make intuition and intellect complementary?

Nil: Let’s start with fast intuition, when you need an answer to a relatively simple question.

Fast Intuition Steps:

1. Prime yourself for intuition. Do anything that elevates the mood and relaxes or stills the mind. Intuition works better in a good mood and a still mind.
2. Drop the question into that stillness.
3. When you get your intuition, run it through your intellect as a filter.

What is Slow Intuition?

Slow intuition is for creatively solving problems that are especially complicated. What tends to work is to ruminate over the problem, let it simmer, and then take a break from it. In a really wonderful 2016 review of creative problem solving, Kenneth Gilhooly often saw this alteration between conscious work and breaks. He called the times when people set problems aside incubation periods.

I call this slow intuition because it may take time to simmer up from the unconscious before it pops into the mind. Remember, when you’re pulling information from your subconscious, you’re pulling from experiences all through your life, including things you learned and absorbed without being aware you were doing it.

Timing the Incubation Periods

What if you were to start working on a hard problem? You had just gotten the problem into your mind when the phone rang. You had to set the problem aside immediately. It turns out that having the phone ring was a good thing because it gave you an immediate break, an immediate entry into an incubation period.

It has been shown that immediate incubation works better than delayed incubation for finding a creative solution for complex novel problems, the kind of problems we’ve never dealt with before. Interrupt yourself almost as soon as you’ve seen the problem.

Look at the problem. Have a good introduction to it. But don’t think about solutions yet. Set it aside, take a mental break, then come to it.

World Premiere of the Menemen Technique

Here comes my world premiere of my approach to solving complex problems. I’ve combined my understanding of intuition with the famous Pomodoro® technique. I’ve been using this approach myself, and I’ve been telling my students about it. But this is the first time I’m going public with it.

Francesco Cirillo invented the Pomodoro® technique in the late eighties. It got its name from his tomato shaped kitchen timer. In this technique, you alternate 25 minutes of work with five minutes of break.

I’m going to combine the Pomodoro® technique with immediate incubation in this technique. Incubation makes me think of eggs. At least for now, I’m going to call this technique Menemen after a Turkish tomato and scrambled egg dish.

Here are the steps of the Menemen technique.

1. Start with the introduction to the problem. Take a good look at it. This is basically when you’re getting your ingredients together: your eggs, your tomatoes, your spices. You’re not doing anything with them yet.
2. Set the problem aside. That’s immediate incubation. This is when you prime your intuition. Go for a walk, meditate, listen to music that you enjoy, play a video game. Anything that stills your mind and elevates your mood. This is like warming up the pan and melting the butter. Think of it as melting your worries and thoughts away.
3. Go into the problem consciously. This is the conscious work period. Get into the problem. Give it a good go. You’re cracking the eggs, chopping the tomatoes, mixing them together. You’re mixing some spices you never used before because you thought about them unconsciously during the incubation. Keep going until you’re tired or you come to a natural stopping point when you feel stuck again.
4. This is where Pomodoro® technique comes in, alternating incubation and conscious work. Take a break, relax, still the mind, elevate the mood. Then go back to conscious problem solving. Take another break. Alternate until you solve it or you don’t want to deal with it anymore. This is basically stirring the dish until it cooks.
5. If the problem isn’t solved, go back to it the next day. Start with step one, introducing your mind to where you left it yesterday and what you’ve already considered. Then immediately go to step 2, immediate incubation, and so on, alternating incubation and conscious work.

Senia: What’s a thought that you’d like to leave with people?

Nil: It enriches our lives to get curious about how we sense and think about things.

Senia: If you could snap your fingers and almost everybody in the world were to take some action, what action would you want that to be?

Nil: Explore, learn, investigate, and let it all simmer before you judge. Question your conclusions, face your prejudices, trace your thoughts back to the source. With that awareness, I believe you can make a positive change in the world.

Picture of Turkish breakfast with Menemen on the left from Wikimedia.

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.