Out of Bounds or Outside the Box?

Thinking out of the box has never been more important than right now, as the number of challenges impacting the every day individual seemingly multiplied. So, what do we do about it? How do we get better at thinking outside of the box in ways that can crossover our professional and personal life.

If you want 15 helpful ways to think outside of the box, while staying in bounds at home and work.

1. Imagine yourself in the shoes of someone else or even your adversary to gain a different perspective.
2. Create visual diagrams to explore connections and ideas.
3. Practice mindfulness (maybe even a small ‘meditation’) to empty your mind and then encourage organic, inspired thinking.
4. Utilize creative exercises involving drawing, painting, role playing or writing to stimulate your imagination.
5. Study the opposite of the existing theories or explanations.
6. Use metaphors to illustrate similarities between unrelated ideas for new awareness.
7. Cross-disciplinary reasoning utilizes your other expertise to incorporate diverse knowledge.
8. Seek input and ideas from a diverse group of people (board of advisors, crowd source)
9. Remove judgment and criticism during brainstorming sessions (every says yea, yea)
10. Find a different physical location to problem solve.
11. View limitations as challenges that can lead to advanced decisions and results.
12. Use storytelling techniques to explain and visualize obstacles and/or solutions.
13. Utilize the “What if” method: What is the impact if we took that approach?
14. Continuously dig deeper into the root causes of problems by (almost annoyingly) repeatedly asking the word “why” after receiving the answer to the given question
15. Combine two outwardly seeming disconnected ideas to form a new one.

We have to be creative and be pro-active at the same time. Finding new and/or improved solutions to any given problem we are facing is, well, our responsibility. That said, if we have more methods to approach the situation we will likely find the right tool in our toolbox…to help us think outside the box!

Wishing you all the best and much love!

Dave