Here’s a little thought experiment for you. You’ll need a watch or timer with a second hand. You have exactly 30 seconds after reading the instructions, to see what you come up with:
Think of a story.
How did you get on? Was it easy? Difficult?
Were you pleased with the story you came up with?
Okay here’s another one. Same rules as before – 30 seconds after reading to come up with the best story you can.
Think of a story about two thieves.
How was that? Easier? Harder?
Let’s do one more. As before, you’ve got 30 seconds to make the most of the instructions.
Think of a story about two thieves. The thieves are brothers, who have spent their whole lives together. All this time, one of them has kept a secret from the other. But recently it’s become harder and harder to keep the secret. The thief with the secret is horrified to notice that it’s starting to interfere with his work – on their last job, they almost got caught because of a mistake he made. But he’s terrified that confessing the secret will destroy their relationship.
How did you get on that time? Was it easier or harder than the previous experiments?
Details, Details
When I’ve run this activity with a group, it is not uncommon for people to ‘draw a blank’ when they do the first experiment. Like the proverbial writer gazing at the blank page, they are stuck for inspiration. ‘Creative freedom’ is usually spoken of as a positive thing – but in this case, having total freedom to write any kind of story they like tends to paralyse people. Even if they do manage to think of something, 30 seconds isn’t long, and because they are starting from scratch to stories tend to be pretty unimpressive.
The second experiment tends to get better results. We may not like thieves, but they tend to have interesting lives. They provoke all kinds of emotions and associations. We are reminded of characters and situations from books and films. Where do they live? What do they steal? Who are their victims? Are they small-time crooks or elite criminal masterminds? Suddenly the whole genre of crime fiction is there for us to riff on. And the fact that there were two of them has all kinds of dramatic possibilities. Why are they working together? Are they part of the same gang? Do they have complimentary skills? Do they like each other, or are they sick of each others’ guts by now? Crime is a stressful business – they must have a few arguments and dustups along the way …
The third experiment usually works better still. In addition to all the great dramatic inspiration from the crime genre, most of us have either experienced sibling relationships ourselves or observed our friends and their siblings at close hand. We recognise the dramatic tension in the interplay of affection and rivalry. And we all know what it’s like to keep a secret, to be afraid that others will find out. The questions come pouring out: What’s the secret? How did he manage to hide it from his brother all this time? Why is it a problem now, when it wasn’t before? How is it affecting their relationship? Does the other thief suspect his brother? Maybe you’ve guessed it already? How is it affecting their work? What happened on that last job? How will the secret come out? Will he confess it or will it be discovered? What will happen then …?
So the more details you are given, the more images and thoughts are sparked in your mind. And the easier it becomes to make up a story. The story starts to write itself, as the details spark questions, the question spark answers and the answer spark images, characters, situations …
But the thing is, every detail that is added to the instructions takes away a little more of your creative freedom. Want to write a story about two window cleaners? Sorry. Rather write about sisters and brothers? Tough luck. Or two brothers with nothing to hide from each other? No chance.
The Value of Creative Constraints
As we saw last week, being told to ‘think outside the box’ is no guarantee of inspiration. And the thought experiments suggest that sometimes it’s easier to be creative ‘inside the box’ of details and constraints.
Could it be that creative freedom is overrated?
Ernie Schenck would answer that question with a resounding ‘Yes!’. As an Emmy Award-nominated creative director with a string of successful advertising campaigns behind him, he should know a thing or two about creativity. In his book The Houdini Solution, he shares the creative wisdom accumulated in his career and invites us to “put creativity and innovation to work by thinking INSIDE the box”:
the biggest secret of productive creative people is that they embrace obstacles, they don’t run from them. In their minds every setback is an opportunity, every limitation is a chance. Where others see a wall, they see a doorway.
Schenck draws inspiration from Harry Houdini, bound in chains and lowered into a glass box full of water. Resisting the box and fighting against the chains would have been fatal. Houdini had first to accept the reality of the constraints on his movement, and work within them to find a way out.
Another of his examples is the Apollo 13 mission, when an explosion on board caused the spacecraft to lose oxygen, electricity, light, and water 200,000 miles from planet Earth. Unless the engineers at Houston could find a solution the astronauts could implement using the materials on board, the crew would die of asphyxiation before they made it back home.
talk about thinking inside the box. You’ve got to design a new product. You’ve got to build that product. Your raw materials consist of cardboard, plastic bags, duct tape, and other low-tech materials. And, hey, just for good measure, you’ve got less than 48 hours to do it all people are going to die.
Fortunately, as we know, in this case necessity really was the mother of invention.
Schenck is scathing about “self-styled creativity guru[s]” who tell us to “think outside the box”:
if only we could free ourselves, if only we could climb out of that infernal box, they told us, we could discover our true creative selves.
And yet for millions of us, those boxes are very real. Almost everything in our lives is a box. Our relationships. Our jobs. Where we live. How young or old we are. Our bank accounts. They’re all boxes. They all have walls. They all have boundaries. But they are not all bad.
So next time you feel frustrated by constraints that limit your options – take a deep breath, centre yourself like Houdini, and start looking for the creative opportunity…
Over to You
What did the thought experiments tell you about your own creativity?
When starting a new project, would you rather have complete freedom or a few pointers as ‘building blocks’ to help you get started?
Can you think of a time when rules and/or constraints helped to spark your creativity?
Do you agree with Michelangelo that “art lives on constraint and dies of freedom”?
About the Author: Mark McGuinness is a poet and creative coach.
View Comments (45)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
« Previous 1 2 3 4 … 7 Next »Thank you.
Was 'thinking outside the box' ever meant to mean 'thinking without the box'?
I don't think so.
Was it ever meant to replace first exhausting yourself 'thinking inside the box'?
No.
It was always about taking ideas from other boxes and seeing how they might relate and enhance your work within your box.
There is no thinking without a box. The brain has to have a reference point to relate ideas to.
The box is the frame, the focal point, the channel in which we are working.
The box is what engages the purpose driven mind.
The box is the HUD target overlayed on whatever we are focused on.
If I sit down to write a piece of music, the box is: the notation paper, the style of music I intend to write, the specific purpose or use for the music, any instrument I might use to help me compose, etc
If I am then driving along and look out the window and see a load of birds sitting on power lines, and from the angle I'm looking at, I can see that they look like notes on a stave... and I see music in that...that I later write down... that is thinking outside the box in that birds on the line has nothing to do with music but I can relate it to my target, the box, which is to compose a piece of music.
If I'm on a factory visit, and the way the machines pound rivets inspires an idea for percussion, I'm outside the box but still relating to it.
Language is so clumsy. Thinking... box... inside... outside. Pah! :-))
Actually, looking at your exercise, we can take it back to the idea of targetting or focus.
You start with a box that is so wide open that you can't see the edges.
You add a little detail and that narrows and focuses the box, the sides come in as it were. Things are starting to be excluded.
You add more detail and the box gets tighter still. The more detail, the more focused and targeted the box.
With your example, the inference is the thieves are two human beings. We can think outside of the box that you have set (but still relating to it), and think of them as 2 ghosts stealing souls, 2 squirrels stealing nuts from bird tables, 2 aliens stealing moon cheese (gotta love that moon cheese!), or 2 N. fowleri amoebas stealing brain cells having got right up your nose!
The inference is that they are brothers who are related... and not brothers who are monks, or broth-ers (makers of soup, stealers of recipes!)
We could think 'outside your box' (outside the frame you have established) by ignoring it as just an exercise and think instead of fleshing it out into a full blown movie script... or wonder what if this were some kind of unconsciously-driven confessional and what insights we can gain into your psyche by analysing it ("hmm no accidents, why did he choose this story??")
I'm thinking outside this comment box now, and thinking its time I shut up, and went to bed. Now there's a creative thought....
zzzzzzzz G'night All! ;-))
Wily
Mark, thank you for the kind words. You have a great blog and insightful readers also. I'm a happy subscriber :)
Hi Mark, good article, I like it. For me an effective creativity = relevant differentiation, just like what your articles try to do.
Edward
Good article. As often is the case, it's not "either/or", but "both/and".
True creativity is inside and outside the box. That is the true Quantum perspective on creativity. ;-)
But...but...a few days ago you said there was no box ;)
For me, I find it alot easier to be creative when there are a few objects that I'm told to work with, rather than having the world as my oyster!
Cheers,
Glen
Ohmigod, THANK YOU for saying out loud that I'm not some unimaginative and creativity-less creature hacking at writing! Time and again, I sit there and think, "What to write?"
Blank page.
"C'mon, it's a post about writing. What to write?"
Blank page.
Then I ask people to give me a push. "What would you like to see me write about?"
"Hm. How about the intro paragraph?"
BOOM! DONE! YES!
With clients, I typically ask for those pushes. "Do you have any titles or topic ideas you'd like me to write on?"
And invariably, they blink and say, "Aren't you supposed to be the creative writer?"
ARRRRRGGGH!
"Creative freedom" is often used as an excuse not to get down to writing or to bail from a project. I've also seen it used as an excuse to work in experimental forms, which are - more often than not - just obfuscation.
I'm as guilty as any other writer of wanting to run away from the boxes, but I know that I'll return to them if I want to develop a successful project.
Innovation expert Clayton Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma, The Innovator's Solution) was interviewed earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal, and put it very succinctly:
"If you give people a lot of money, it gives them the privilege of pursuing the wrong strategy for a very long time. In an environment where you've got to push innovations out the door fast and keep the cost of innovation low, the probability that you'll be successful is actually much higher... The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business."
Limitations/boxes are good!
Sounds very interesting. I seem to work better under constraints as well. I'm usually a person at work also who is termed the "fool finder". I usually get people to change work rules out of loop holes that I can find, under no particular circumstance. I just seem to think that way.
Sometimes it just seems to work out that way. With our society that way it is, and with the people that are the norm, things can go unearthed for a long period of time without noticing.
@chuck frey what a fantastic quote. I'm gonna surely mention this to my team this week. thanks for posting it :)