Page 108 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

CHAPTER 8

180∞ Thinking:

A Tnereffid Way to

Ideate

Whether or not we are aware of it, when we start out looking for new,
bigger, better ideas in any field we are most often influenced by arbitrary
boundaries of thought that severely limit our creative playing field.
When people in the bedding industry, for example, think of improv-
ing beds, they make many assumptions about its necessary properties:
shape, materials, height, degree of levelness, temperature, measure of
softness or firmness, color, texture, sounds it makes or doesn’t make,
and so on.
Most of these assumptions come directly from what has been done
before in this category. Are these suppositions right? Are they the best
answers? Are there better routes to take our thinking? We’ll never
know if we are slaves to those presumptions, even if we are conscious
of the limits they put on us.
A thinking tool I have been working with and refining for years
helps people escape the gravity of these limiting assumptions that hold
back so many thinkers. It’s a tool that not only chooses to ignore all of
the preconceptions in any category of thinking, it actually uses those
knowns as pushing-off points to change the direction of thinking by
180°, in much the same way lap swimmers use the end of the pool to
propel themselves in the opposite direction. Not surprisingly, I call this
method of ideation 180° Thinking.

AGAINST YOUR BETTER JUDGMENT

When faced with a problem to solve or anytime you’d like to apply
some creative juice, simply direct your thought process in the exact