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The VW Beetle has a very distinctive shape - and even over 3 generations of design covering nearly 60 years of production, that distinctive shape has been retained, and nearly everyone can recognise a Beetle. Some Beetles come in a very noticeable yellow.
So, the thing is with these yellow Beetles, there are few-enough of them that you won't come across them all the time, but there are enough of them that one will cross your path every few weeks.
You may never have thought about yellow Beetles before reading this blog, and actually, I would encourage you not to give them too much thought after reading this blog - conscious thought that is.
The Yellow Beetle Effect is my term for a very useful and powerful mental capability that we humans have. It does have a basis in a group of psychological effects with mostly unpronounceable names, and it works like this. Now that you (or rather I) have flagged the idea of a yellow Beetle in your mind, your subconscious will carry it around as a potential 'object of interest' - don't worry, your brain has an enormous capacity to monitor the world around you without needing your conscious attention, which is good because it's your conscious mind that is limited by capacity and speed.
At some point in the future, while driving around, a yellow Beetle will cross your path and your subconscious will recognise it and give you the thought: 'Hey, there's a yellow Beetle'. Previously, they may have crossed your path and you would not even notice them. You may even wonder why you are noticing a yellow Beetle, before your mind catches up and connects it to some blog you read a few weeks ago. Then you'll see more of them. The important point is that the yellow Beetle didn’t suddenly become more common; it was always there - the only thing that changed was what your brain considered worth noticing.
So, there is an important point to this ....
We humans are curious about the world around us - to a point. We ask questions and go in search of answers. And if someone asks us a question, we feel we should know. Or if we encounter something we don’t understand, our instinct is to search for an explanation straight away. But on the whole, we don't like the feeling of not knowing or having unanswered questions, so we either put pressure on ourselves to come up with an answer (speed rather than quality is usually the order of the day), or quite often rather than answering it, we will resolve it by giving it a label such as unknowable, who knows, or it doesn't really matter. While 'resolved but not answered' - the discomfort of not knowing disappears, but so does the curiosity.
Curiosity is crucial - especially in a fast changing world or environment. The thing is, in an ever changing world, there will be a dearth of good solid answers and so we must become increasingly comfortable with that uncomfortable feeling of I don't know. Having questions that you don't know the answer to is good.
Going back to the Yellow Beetle Effect, the same thing happens with unanswered questions. Once primed, your subconscious mind is constantly on the lookout for answers, or snippets of related information that might one day become part of the answer. You may also suddenly find yourself digging out memories of other things you've seen or heard, and connecting them with the new observation.
To prime your subconscious to go on a quest of information gathering, understanding, and answer finding, you need to give it a good bit of curiosity. Ask a question: What is that? Why does that happen? I wonder what’s going on there? That doesn’t quite fit… why? Give yourself permission to wonder and don't rush to resolve the question with a quick answer or an excuse for not answering.
As your mind gets to work in the background, it will slowly gather clues from conversations, books, podcasts, observations, and experiences until, one day, the pieces suddenly connect. When something does creep into your conscious mind, acknowledge it (Ooh, there's a yellow Beetle), maybe ask another curiosity question of it, and then move on. That keeps the curiosity alive. The answer, or understanding, often arrives because your mind had been collecting the evidence in the background all along, rather than because you were desperately searching for it.
I’ve come to realise that many of the most useful questions in life don’t need immediate answers. In fact, merely asking the question or planting a spark of curiosity may be the most important step because it changes:
So don’t worry if you don’t yet have the answer - plant the question, then trust your own Yellow Beetle Effect to do some of the work.
After all, answers solve today’s problems; better questions often solve tomorrow’s. And perhaps the quality of our thinking is limited less by the answers we have than by the questions we choose to ask.
Ad Futurum
Graham