Thinking outside the box is more than just a business cliché. It means approaching
problems in new, innovative ways; conceptualizing problems differently; and
understanding your position in relation to any particular situation in a way you’d
never thought of before. Ironically, its a cliché that means to think of clichéd
situations in ways that aren’t clichéd.
We’re told to “think outside the box” all the time, but how exactly do we do that?
How do we develop the ability to confront problems in ways other than the ways we
normally confront problems? How do we cultivate the ability to look at things
differently from the way we typically look at things?
Thinking outside the box starts well before we’re “boxed in” – that is, well
before we confront a unique situation and start forcing it into a familiar “box”
that we already know how to deal with. Or at least think we know how to deal with.
Here are 11 ways to beef up your out-of-the-box thinking skills. Make an effort to
push your thinking up to and beyond its limit every now and again – the talents
you develop may come in handy the next time you face a situation that “everybody
knows” how to solve.
1. Study another industry.
I’ve learned as much about teaching from learning about marketing as I have from
studying pedagogy – maybe more. Go to the library and pick up a trade magazine in
an industry other than your own, or grab a few books from the library, and learn
about how things are done in other industries. You might find that many of the
problems people in other industries face are similar to the problems in your own,
but that they’ve developed really quite different ways of dealing with them. Or
you might well find new linkages between your own industry and the new one,
linkages that might well be the basis of innovative partnerships in the future.
2. Learn about another religion.
Religions are the way that humans organize and understand their relationships not
only with the supernatural or divine but with each other. Learning about how such
relations are structured can teach you a lot about how people relate to each other
and the world around them. Starting to see the reason in another religion can also
help you develop mental flexibility – when you really look at all the different
ways people comprehend the same mysteries, and the fact that they generally manage
to survive regardless of what they believe, you start to see the limitations of
whatever dogma or doxy you follow, a revelation that will transfer quite a bit
into the non-religious parts of your life.
3. Take a class.
Learning a new topic will not only teach you a new set of facts and figures, it
will teach you a new way of looking at and making sense of aspects of your
everyday life or of the society or natural world you live in. This in turn will
help expand both how you look at problems and the breadth of possible solutions
you can come up with.
4. Read a novel in an unfamiliar genre.
Reading is one of the great mental stimulators in our society, but it’s easy to
get into a rut. Try reading something you’d never have touched otherwise – if you
read literary fiction, try a mystery or science fiction novel; if you read a lot
of hard-boiled detective novels, try a romance; and so on. Pay attention not only
to the story but to the particular problems the author has to deal with. For
instance, how does the fantasy author bypass your normal skepticism about magic
and pull you into their story? Try to connect those problems to problems you face
in your own field. For example, how might your marketing team overcome your
audiences normal reticence about a new “miracle” product?
5. Write a poem.
While most problem-solving leans heavily on our brain’s logical centers, poetry
neatly bridges our more rational left-brain though processes and our more creative
right-brain processes. Though it may feel foolish (and getting comfortable with
feeling foolish might be another way to think outside the box), try writing a poem
about the problem you’re working on. Your poem doesn’t necessarily have to propose
a solution – the idea is to shift your thinking away from your brain’s logic
centers and into a more creative part of the brain, where it can be mulled over in
a non-rational way. Remember, nobody has to ever see your poem…
6. Draw a picture.
Drawing a picture is even more right-brained, and can help break your logical
left-brain’s hold on a problem the same way a poem can. Also, visualizing a
problem engages other modes of thinking that we don’t normally use, bringing you
another creative boost.
7. Turn it upside down.
Turning something upside-down, whether physically by flipping a piece of paper
around or metaphorically by re-imagining it can help you see patterns that
wouldn’t otherwise be apparent. The brain has a bunch of pattern-making habits
that often obscure other, more subtle patterns at work; changing the orientation
of things can hide the more obvious patterns and make other patterns emerge. For
example, you might ask what a problem would look like if the least important
outcome were the most important, and how you’d then try to solve it.
8. Work backwards.
Just like turning a thing upside down, working backwards breaks the brain’s normal
conception of causality. This is the key to backwards planning, for example, where
you start with a goal and think back through the steps needed to reach it until
you get to where you are right now.
9. Ask a child for advice.
I don’t buy into the notion that children are inherently ore creative before
society “ruins” them, but I do know that children think and speak with a n
ignorance of convention that is often helpful. Ask a child how they might tackle a
problem, or if you don’t have a child around think about how you might reformulate
a problem so that a child could understand it if one was available. Don’t run out
and build a boat made out of cookies because a child told you to, though – the
idea isn’t to do what the child says, necessarily, but to jog your own thinking
into a more unconventional path.
10. Invite randomness.
If you’ve ever seen video of Jackson Pollock painting, you have seen a masterful
painter consciously inviting randomness into his work. Pollock exercises a great
deal of control over his brushes and paddles, in the service of capturing the
stray drips and splashes of paint that make up his work. Embracing mistakes and
incorporating them into your projects, developing strategies that allow for random
input, working amid chaotic juxtapositions of sound and form – all of these can
help to move beyond everyday patterns of thinking into the sublime.
11. Take a shower.
There’s some kind of weird psychic link between showering and creativity. Who
knows why? Maybe it’s because your mind is on other things, maybe it’s because
you’re naked, maybe it’s the warm water relaxing you – it’s a mystery. But a lot
of people swear by it. So maybe when the status quo response to some circumstance
just isn’t working, try taking a shower and see if something remarkable doesn’t
occur to you!
Do you have strategies for thinking differently? Share your tips with us in the comments.
Thanks,
Surbhi Maheshwari [MBA Fin / Mktg ]
Manager Finance
On Line Assistence :
Gtalk : SurbhiM.AeroSoft@gmail.com
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