Bury the Box

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What if we could never get stuck again? What if we never ran out of ideas? What if we used tools to help us generate an endless stream of ideas?

Enter the author of THINK BETTER, Tim Hurson – enjoy our interview here and learn some new tools for thinking better!

Podcasted here, thanks to CJOB radio…Your Life, Unlimited with Stephanie Staples and Tim Hurson

Enjoy Tim’s guest blog here…

I give a lot of keynote speeches about creativity and innovation. Often, the people who introduce me ask for texts to read from. The last line of my prepared introduction is, “Tim thinks the phrase ‘out of the box thinking’ should be put back in the box and buried in a deep hole.” It almost always gets a laugh and sets a nice tone for my talk.

But it’s more than just a cute line. I really think Out of the Box Thinking is a damaging way to think about our creative potential.

My biggest gripe with OBT is that it makes it sound as though creative thinking is something we should go away somewhere and do as an exception. It makes about as much sense to say, “Let’s take a few minutes and think creatively” as it does to say, “Let’s take a few minutes and think ethically.” Creative thinking should be available to us on demand, not as an exception.

The real problem is we’ve seduced ourselves into believing that creative thinking is something special. It’s not. We’re all pretty good at it. If you doubt that, think about the last time you took a shower, or a long drive, or simply dozed off to sleep (though I hope not while driving!). You probably had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of creative ideas.

All of us are creative thinkers. Where we fall off the wagon, though, is that few of us are creative receivers. We don’t honor, celebrate, or often even remember the wonderful creative ideas we have. We have them — and then they’re gone — either because we’ve rejected them or forgotten them. Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness all that creative thinking! Wouldn’t it be great if we could bring the shower into the boardroom or the family room or the factory floor? That’s where we need creative ideas.

So how about we stop talking about thinking outside the box and start looking for ways to open the box and let our natural creative thinking in?

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