Start Thinking Out of the Box

How do you start thinking out of the box in your everyday life? By "stepping out" of the usual ways of looking at things (that's the box) to find new and useful ideas from new perspective. The following technique is one of the many ways to do that.

Getting Your Thinking Out of the Box

A simple technique for "out of the box" thinking is to identify the elements of the "box" and look for any alternatives, even allowing crazy ideas some consideration. These mostly will not be useful, but work with them and some may become ideas that aren't so crazy. They may even lead to great innovations, so let's look at a specific example to see how this works.

What if wanted to stop smoking, and were looking for a creative new way to quit? Start by identifying the ideas, assumptions and solutions that are common - the basis of the "box." They might include:

- Quitting is a matter of willpower and force of character.

- Quitting is a personal goal you have to work towards alone.

- Paying for some program may help.

- Quitting smoking is necessary.

- Quitting is difficult.

Other common ideas and solutions may come to mind, but these are enough to demonstrate the process. We begin with the willpower issue, and ask, "Does it really have to be a test of willpower?" The question might lead to ideas for easier ways, like hypnotism. It could suggests staying away from others who smoke for a while, to avoid temptation. Nothing too creative here, so we move on.

Thinking of it as a personal goal is natural, but not necessary. A lot of other people want to quit, perhaps even a few friends of yours. Could you make this a group goal? Keeping that thought in mind, you challenge the next item with the thought; "What if a program paid me to quit smoking?" An out-of-the-box solution occurs to you: A group challenge and bet on the outcome.

You and three friends who want to quit to each put a thousand dollars in an account, and after a year, those who have not smoked a cigarette get to split the money. If just two of you succeed, you would each be a thousand dollars ahead, and if only one succeeds, he or she will make three thousand dollars profit. That's some real motivation, and the competitive nature of the challenge may help too.

Now we look at the assumption that you have to quit. Is it possible there's a way to continue smoking without the health problems that are normal? Switch slowly to cigarettes with less nicotine? Maybe the sensation of the cigarette in your mouth is as important as the nicotine, and you can eventually just "smoke" them without lighting them at all. That may work, but it's not a new idea, so you move on - you're looking for more out-of-the-box solutions, after all.

The idea that it is difficult to quit leads to the question, what if it was easy to quit? Nothing occurs to you, so you turn the idea around asking, "What if it was difficult to smoke?" That's a good example of an out of the box question. It immediately suggests some ideas on how to make smoking harder to do. You and your spouse could pay five dollars per cigarette into a special account which is split at the end of nine months. The one who smokes less will gain the most, plus the pain of the high cost will make it harder to light up.

Using the same idea, the most potentially profitable idea may be developing a drug that that causes you to get immediately nauseous when you smoke a cigarette. This could be something like the drug "anabuse" which makes alcoholics vomit if they take a drink. Even better: an injection that lasts for a month, so you can't "forget" your medicine.

The basic process for this technique is to first define the "box," by listing all the usual ideas and solutions, and then consider these one-by-one. You question them, attack them, alter them, look for opposites, and do anything else to find a new perspective from which to see the problem. Of the many ways to have more creative ideas, this one is easier than most to learn, and is a very systematic technique for getting your thinking out of the box. and into new ideas.