Whack your brain
A few days ago—nine or ten—I blogged about A Whack on the Side of the Head. the nudge into more creative thinking by Roger von Oech. Today’s tip is about another tool to feed your creativity.
Oblique strategies started life as a deck of cards. Not ordinary playing cards, but a little black box full of small cards printed with “Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.”
Created in collaboration by Brian Eno, a musician, and Peter Schmidt, an artist, these cards present you with a question, a thought, a suggestion designed to help you look at a problem in a different way.
Some of the cards will seem disconnected from your problem. Obscure. Confusing.
Sometimes, those are the best cards.
Some of them will present you with an obvious solution. (More like an obvious path, since they aren’t really solutions.)
The cards themselves don’t seem to be available anymore, except, sometimes, on eBay.
You could make your own. The full text of the various editions of the cards, as well as more history about them, on this website. There are downloadable zipped versions available at the same place for generating random cards on your own PC.
Or you can generate a random oblique strategy online here.
These are not easy if you are used to linear thinking, but they will reward you, I think.
Give it a try.
