You know the cliche “out of the box” thinking?

Do you know what it means?

It took me a while to figure this one out.  I always thought of “the box” as being a construct someone else had created for me – my teachers, my boss, my co-workers.  But when I met people who truly thought of new ideas, I found that they prospered in situations where I was still thinking “inside the box.”  They had the same teachers, bosses and co-workers.

Huh.

It turns out no one else made “the box.”  I made my own box.  The biggest barriers we encounter are the ones we build ourselves – through experience, education, friends, family, etc.

I’m not suggesting experience is a bad thing.  Far from it.  But I’ve found routines and patterns can often lead to these box-like constructions in our minds.  We think that just because we did something yesterday, it will work today.  Unfortunately, that’s not always true.  In fact, sometimes doing things in the opposite way works better this time around.

One of the biggest mistakes people (myself included) fall into during a project is to focus solely on what’s comfortable or familiar. Unfortunately, if you approach every new problem just like you did the last one, you’ll likely end up building copies of ideas rather than creating something new.

Get yourself out of your own mind.  Don’t rely on comfort and familiarity.  Learn new skills, even if you will never become a master at them.  Reach out to people in different but related fields in your problem area.  Create a team of different thinking people.  Then mash together the “familiar” with the “new” and take a fresh look at solving your problem.

Will you sometimes re-use old ideas?  Of course.  But the beauty here is, you’re always changing and adapting to something new.  And that’s the most important “out of the box” skill you can acquire.

-Deborah Fike

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