Thinking Outside the Box – Shallow Motivational Tip 4

Apparently the shelf life of a mind puzzle is some number approaching infinity. Over 40 years ago a brain teaser composed of nine dots in a 3 x 3 matrix on a page was first published by that famous author Anonymous. The trick was to connect all nine dots with four continuous straight lines without lifting the pen from the page or tracing over another line. The rules of the game never mentioned that those lines had to be contained within the box formed by the dots, but conventional thinking makes it impossible to solve. Only by using lines that extended outside of the box could the instructions be followed and the game solved. Soon everybody knew the solution to the puzzle, but it didn’t end there. Psychologists, professors, management consultants and just about everybody else latched onto the symbolism of “thinking outside the box” and it went on, and on, and on, and on… etc… ad infinitum… ad nauseum. There are people today professing to be “out of the box thinkers” who never heard of the original puzzle and don’t even know the origin of the phrase. It seems ironic that these thinkers are trapped inside of the box of shallow motivational theology.

Rules May Not Be Exact – Probably the best lesson from this worn out cliché is that following all of the existing rules does not preclude using logic that is outside of the rules. Extending lines outside of a puzzle does not fully capture the intricacies of bursting through walls around real life problems. Tough solutions usually do require expanding horizons to include processes and procedures never before used. Assessing the risk and value of alternative approaches requires a sense of the bigger picture and what lies beyond the problem at hand. Wild and crazy ideas may lead to innovative and creative answers never before tried.

Failure To Follow Rules Is Not Excusable – There is one interpretation of going outside of established procedures that takes the analogy to an unintended conclusion. If the rules are not specific enough to find a solution, make up new rules. To do so by breaking the original rules may be courting disaster. One solution to the nine-dot puzzle is to increase the size of the dots to the point that it can be solved with only three lines. Some real life situations may allow changing the environment, but most do not. Questioning and verifying the rules is important, but arbitrary adjustments will usually result in unexpected and perhaps unwanted results.

There Is Safety Inside the Box – Danger lurks outside of the known universe. It is not a bad thing to think inside the box if that is where the solutions happen to be. The best thinking is done inside of the comfortable box of accumulated thought. This is the universe that allows drawing upon known resources to determine whether or not the solutions lie elsewhere… or anywhere at all. Cautious exploratory thinking sometimes makes more progress than leaping outside of reality to try to make things happen. Risk assessment is a clearer picture when formed from a safe place.

Like most motivational jargon there is a sense of purpose, but beyond the obvious message to be innovative in thinking there is no logical extension of the analogy that makes much sense. Hackneyed beyond the point of being meaningless, box thinking is so yesterday. Diving into the shallows of this logic is not… well, logical.

 
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