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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.
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…
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
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!
Think Outside the Box, 11 ways to Think Out of the Box.
Regards,
Preeti Bagad [BE(CS)]
SW Engineer Cum Blogger
On Line Assistence :
Gtalk : PreetiB.A1Soft@gmail.com
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Rediff Bol : PreetiB.A1Soft@rediffmail.com
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