Everyone always talks about “thinking outside the box.” This simply means that you need to come up with a brand new way to tackle an issue or problem in order to find solutions that the old ways of doing things may not.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to get over thinking about things the same way. You may need to employ some tactics and techniques to break out of the mold and think outside the box.
1. Get a Second Opinion – When you’re stuck and cannot come up with any new ideas, you can boost your creativity simply by getting another opinion. Even if the opinion is contrary to yours or out and out wrong, it will stimulate a new part of your brain learning about it, thus triggering new ideas within you.
2. Ask an Expert – One way to get new ideas is to surround yourself with experts and talk to them regularly. You can find experts by looking at book authors, local college professors, and others, but you may also know someone who works at your place of employment, goes to your place of worship, or that you know through someone else. Never be afraid to go out for coffee to talk to an expert about the topic they love. They’ll enjoy it, and you’ll open your mind to facts you maybe did not realize.
3. Break It Down – Stop trying to figure it out; instead, break it down to the smallest parts. When you do that, you’ll start seeing things differently. For example, if you ever watch the TV show Chopped, one reason some of the cooks end up with such amazing dishes is that they break down the ingredients differently in their mind. Canned chicken becomes protein and celery stalks become salt. Eventually, you realize that you can use each ingredient anywhere protein is used, or salt is used.
4. Start Over – Sometimes you need to start from the beginning to find the answers. That may require that you reconstruct the thing, situation, or story from the beginning. When you think about murder investigations, this is how they often catch people. They start from the beginning with the victim and learn all they can about the victim’s life. That sometimes seems irrelevant, but it often leads to the killer.
5. Read All the Research – The more research you can read about your topic from every angle, the more likely you are to be able to come up with out-of-the-box solutions and ideas. The more you know about what others know, and what others think, the easier it will be to develop your own ideas and opinions.
6. Write What You Know – As you learn more, start writing it down or otherwise recording it in a way that you can check your notes. Free writing of what you know, without looking it up and thinking much about it, is a great way to come up with new solutions – as you may do amid the “flow” because your mind knows a lot more subconsciously than it knows consciously.
7. Create a Mind Map or Outline – Even if you’re not writing something, a mind map or outline (depending on how your brain thinks) will help you organize your thoughts better. Putting it all in order, and rearranging it and adding things to it that you may not have considered at first, will help.
8. Change Your Scenery – If all else fails, just get away and change what you’re doing and looking at or thinking. Just stop thinking about it at all. Go for a long walk, go for a swim, do something else and let it go for a bit. This is one of the best ways to come up with solutions. When your mind is at rest, it’s putting all the things you’ve learned together. But you cannot accomplish that if you don’t get away.
Try some of these tips next time you need to think about something in a new way. The truth is, anything you can do to trick your mind into letting go of the old way so that you can come up with new and relevant ways to do something is valid. You can really blow your mind when you start realizing how creative one had to be to come up with the idea of the telephone, the computer, and other technology. But remember that you have the same equipment and there are likely discoveries and inventions that someone hasn’t even considered yet. Will it be you?
