[sei]

[the genius filter]

How to Unlock the Genius Hiding in Your Brain

Most creation happens in the dark.

We write code, design a product, or build a plan based on an image in our head. Only after the work is done can we see the result. That delay between action and outcome kills those fragile ideas that flash in an instant of inspiration before vanishing from our conscience mind.

Sharif Shameem, founder of Lexica, offers a direct, immediate method to capture those genius ideas as they come. He believes we discover our true capabilities through playful experimentation and rapid demos. By building small, fast prototypes, we stop guessing and start seeing the real, haptic feedback. This turns creation into a form of excavation, a way of digging for the genius already hidden within each of us.

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His work is built on a powerful design rule, one also championed by the likes of Bret Victor: Creators need an immediate connection to what they are making.

This issue examines how that principle shapes invention, and how following your curiosity can unlock the hidden genius inside you.

[the spark]

Excavating What's Already There

Most people think creation is simply adding something new to the world.

Bret Victor sees it differently. Victor has a background in programming, and too often found himself losing what felt like his best ideas in translation between mind and machine. He’d have a spark, race to his PC, fumble through typing it into a text editor, wait for it to compile, only to find that by the time he got an output, somehow his initial spark was lost.

After suffering through this process for years, Victor came to believe that there really is genius hidden in the space between what you imagine and what you can see. The problem is, the tools we use force us to work blind.

But here’s the problem: When you can't see the effect of your choices immediately, you're not really creating. You're guessing. And guessing kills the fragile, half-formed ideas that lead to breakthroughs. Victor watched people try to animate a leaf falling from a tree by setting keyframes in time, imagining the motion in their heads. They'd spend hours and never get it right. But when he built a tool that let them perform the motion with their hands while watching it unfold, they got it in minutes.

So, Victor learned early on what most of us are starting to feel: The tech isn’t there to do the work for you. The best tools and systems help you build fast, see immediately, and let your own curiosity guide you to the conclusion.

The work is already inside you. You just need tools that let you see it.

[the science]

Action reveals the deepest thoughts.

In 1994, cognitive scientists David Kirsh and Paul Maglio studied how people actually play Tetris, expecting to find that the best players thought first, then acted. Instead, they discovered quite the opposite.

Players constantly rotated and moved pieces in ways that seemed wasteful, actions that brought them no closer to their goal placement. But when Kirsh and Maglio measured performance, these "extra" moves weren't mistakes. Players who made more of these seemingly pointless rotations and translations actually performed better than those who didn't.

The researchers realized these actions weren't about advancing toward a goal. They were about thinking with the world. Players rotated pieces to see what became possible. They moved pieces to the edges of the screen to verify column placement. They spun shapes to recognize them faster than mental imagery alone would allow.

Kirsh and Maglio called these "epistemic actions," physical moves that make mental computation easier, faster, and more reliable. Seemingly intuitively, the players had learned something profound: the fastest way to think is often to act first.

This validates what both Victor and Shameem preach about creativity. When your inputs are intuitive, immediate, and tangible in the real world, you work with a different intelligence that uses your workspace as an extension of your mind. And that’s when the genius comes out.

When the world becomes your workspace, you get to watch your genius unfold.

[the takeaways]

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1) Build It…Immediately​
​Ideas fade when trapped in your head. When you can see your work develop in real time, you dig deeper than ideation. Immediate feedback turns imagination into evidence and keeps ideas alive long enough to grow.

2) Let Curiosity Lead the Work​
​Curiosity is a compass, not a distraction. Follow the pull of interest and let small experiments reveal the genius hidden in your hunches.

3) Think With Your Hands​
​Conscious actions make thinking visible. Build, test, adjust. The body often finds the answer before the brain does.

4) Prototype to Reveal
​Uncertainty is the raw material of discovery. Each quick prototype uncovers what your imagination sensed but couldn’t yet prove.

5) Share What You Find​
​A demo is proof of curiosity in motion. When you share what you build, you invite others to see new possibilities. The loop between action, feedback, and expression is where private insight becomes collective progress.