5 Web Ways to Shake Up Your Thinking
October 8th, 2007 (6:00am) Anne Zelenka 8 Comments
Sometimes you’ll feel stuck and stagnant just when you need to come up with new ideas or new approaches. What to do? Try these websites and pages to shake up your thinking.
Approach from a different angle. Musician Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies are a set of cards with short phrases that cryptically suggest how you should for approach whatever problem you are facing. They’re called oblique because they tackle the problem sideways instead of head-on. You can draw just one and then figure out how it applies to your current project even if it seems it doesn’t, or you can keep drawing until you get one that resonates with you.
You can get the Oblique Strategies in a bunch of different ways: as a deck of cards, with a Mac Dashboard widget, but best of all on a web page. Here’s the one I drew for this morning: “Overtly resist change.”
Infuse your mind with cool. Emily Chang’s PicoCool blog finds “tiny and obscure content from the world of peer media, social networks and subcultures.” Browse the blog or subscribe to the RSS feed for products, photos, and other creations that will shake up your thinking. For example, check out the bathtub-shaped SPA memo pad holder with a little bather relaxing Calgon-style. Just looking at his (her?) bulbous head makes me feel more relaxed and open to good ideas.
Hack your creativity. Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, offers tons of advice on creative thinking on his blog including Creative thinking hacks. I like his advice to “switch modes” when you’re feeling stuck. I’m a writer and avid reader, but I also paint — and painting refreshes my thinking when I can’t absorb or produce another word. He also suggests starting an idea journal and finding a way to turn your mind off for a while so your subconscious can work on the problem.
Find pithy wisdom. Interesting quotes can make you think in new and different ways. My favorite quotes site is Don’t Quote Me, because it makes it really easy to browse quotes for a specific topic like creativity, management, and risk.
Seed your thinking with images. Flickr’s Interestingness page shows you “interesting” photos from the last 7 days, defined by some proprietary algorithm that takes into account a number of factors: “Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing.” The images on this page (or those you find in other places) can provide fodder for your visual brain which might think of something your verbal brain didn’t or couldn’t.
What do you do to refresh your thinking when you’ve gotten stuck?
8 Comments Post your own comment
Virginia DeBolt says: October 8th, 2007 7:23am
I like taking a walk when I’m stuck. A little oxygen and nature do wonders for the thinking process.
Rick says: October 8th, 2007 11:18am
I resonate with the oblique strategy idea, but what I’ve been *trying* lately to get out of a rut is the George Costanza “do the opposite” technique. No, I’m not as extreme as George, but I will attempt opposites in behavior to give me a boost or fix a bad attitude. The other night, I was in an unfortunately typically tired mood before putting the youngest kiddie to bed, and did not want to read her a requested book. I did the opposite, actually diving in with enthusiasm; she loved it, and I loved it, mainly given the joy she clearly felt. Here’s to doing that a lot more often !
camping girl says: October 9th, 2007 7:24am
I agree that taking a walk and getting outdoors is a good way of sparking creativity: sometimes if it’s the internet you’re stuck in a rut with it’s best to detatch from it for a time.
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Emily Chang says: October 22nd, 2007 3:51am
Anne, thanks for mentioning PicoCool! I actually started PicoCool to re-shake up my own thinking. Glad you’re enjoying it.
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PicoCool Blog — PicoCool on WebWorkerDaily says: February 14th, 2009 9:47pm
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