Thinking outside of the box: The Cliche
I am sure you have heard this phrase far too often. I know I have, and all too often said by people who don’t actually do it. Something to consider is that its hard to have a different perspective when each day is similar, taken up by the same issues; reality for most small business owners. Same problems, same solutions. Just running the business takes all your energy. Having time and extra energy to think outside the box is something you put on a wish list. Probably under “someday in your GTD application” (no I am not going to write about GTD).
I am going to present an idea, one which does not involve asking you to make time to climb a mountain to get a different view or spend a weekend trying to cross a river with two oil drums and a piece of string (think out of the box and use the bridge!). But what I am going to suggest is that you put away that business guru book, that trade magazine or that white paper on increasing sales and instead pick up a work of fiction or a biography of someone you find interesting but was not in your business.
You see, I really do not believe you will be capable of thinking outside of the box unless you are engaging with other people who do not even live in your box. And when you do start to engage in that way, you will find that you no longer need to make a special time to do the thinking, it just starts to happen.
There is a whole bundle of theory and research that may or may not be correct about how our brains work. One theory is that we create neural pathways in our brain. Teenagers are teenagers because their pathways are forming and changing quickly. As we get older they start to get entrenched. Apparently, our brains are now trained to work in windows and folders on our computers. We have difficulty seeing the data represented in any other way.
So, if we engage in activities which create new pathways and don’t allow ourselves to trot into a business “cul-de-sac,” we should encourage our brains to stay active and that helps us begin to use the new sources of knowledge to create even more new pathways on the fly.
So off you go, find something which makes you think about anything other that running your business. Give your brain a vacation. It will return rested and invigorated. Though hopefully not too much like a teenager.
Happy thinking.
