Who put the box there?
What box? The one we refer to when we say "think outside the box".
But where did that box come from, anyway?
I used to think that phrase was a good place to begin, since it generally means to be more inventive. I’d interpreted it to include looking for an unusual solution, examining a problem from an angle I usually ignored, or doing something I thought no one else has thought of yet.
I'd start with the premise that “the box” was solid and fixed. But then a question popped into my mind: what if the box is made of something we’d all unconsciously decided is fixed and solid but actually might not actually be that way at all?
In other words, I fell into the same kind of thinking about the box itself: I’d accepted all the underlying definitions and assumptions that everyone else had: what the problem in the box was, how to identify my options and take action.
That made me realize not only wasn’t I getting anywhere with finding a solution but that I needed to look at that box differently.
That’s when everything changed.
Thinking outside the box doesn’t have to mean arriving at a more ingenious way to solve a problem. It might just start with the way we define the problem and the box itself. It might just be the case that both of them are based on unquestioned assumptions.
If that were the case, the problem we’re dealing with doesn’t have to begin by trying to get out of the box.
This is where I decided to try something a little different: I widened my attention and let myself put aside the unquestioned certainty that there was a box that the problem was sitting in.
Suddenly I could see something new that hadn’t been visible when I believed the box was the only way to define both the problem and its solution.
I discovered the box was made out of what I already thought I knew.
Once I reoriented myself to what I was actually looking at, not how it appeared to be in a ready-made box, several unexpected possibilities came into view.
I’d say that was creativity in action.
But where did that box come from, anyway?
I used to think that phrase was a good place to begin, since it generally means to be more inventive. I’d interpreted it to include looking for an unusual solution, examining a problem from an angle I usually ignored, or doing something I thought no one else has thought of yet.
I'd start with the premise that “the box” was solid and fixed. But then a question popped into my mind: what if the box is made of something we’d all unconsciously decided is fixed and solid but actually might not actually be that way at all?
In other words, I fell into the same kind of thinking about the box itself: I’d accepted all the underlying definitions and assumptions that everyone else had: what the problem in the box was, how to identify my options and take action.
That made me realize not only wasn’t I getting anywhere with finding a solution but that I needed to look at that box differently.
That’s when everything changed.
Thinking outside the box doesn’t have to mean arriving at a more ingenious way to solve a problem. It might just start with the way we define the problem and the box itself. It might just be the case that both of them are based on unquestioned assumptions.
If that were the case, the problem we’re dealing with doesn’t have to begin by trying to get out of the box.
This is where I decided to try something a little different: I widened my attention and let myself put aside the unquestioned certainty that there was a box that the problem was sitting in.
Suddenly I could see something new that hadn’t been visible when I believed the box was the only way to define both the problem and its solution.
I discovered the box was made out of what I already thought I knew.
Once I reoriented myself to what I was actually looking at, not how it appeared to be in a ready-made box, several unexpected possibilities came into view.
I’d say that was creativity in action.