Why “Thinking Outside The Box” Is Completely Wrong

Every time I hear someone say “Think outside of the box” I cringe. Call it a pet-peeve, but this saying is a common misconception in creativity. When you look at the neuroscience of creativity, you see that it’s physically impossible for your brain to “Think outside the box.” That’s simply not how the brain is wired. It’s like asking your brain to fire a neuron that doesn’t exist.

Here’s the truth: There is nothing outside of “the box” except for more boxes.

The trick isn’t to think outside of the box, the trick is to think between boxes.

This is how the brain naturally creates new ideas… By combining different sets of knowledge and forming something new. Not only is this how the brain naturally creates ideas… But it’s the only system by which it can. There are many strategies on how to achieve a creative outcome… But the outcome is always the same: it’s a synthesis of “boxes,” not the dismissal of them.

Let’s rephrase the question and ask “How do you escape the current paradigm (default box) of our industry?” I just recently spoke at a convention in LA about this topic.

Here’s what I told them…

Step 1: Dissatisfaction With Status-Quo

Everything begins with some type of dissatisfaction. Usually, people use dissatisfaction to motivate “forward movement” (I.e. Do more of the same, but do it better than you have in the past or better than your competitor(s)). Unfortunately, this keeps the paradigm in tact. You’re still playing in the box… still buying into the conventional rules.

Dissatisfaction must be directed at the status-quo to motivate exploratory behavior. Without becoming dissatisfied with the status-quo, the default option is to apply the status-quo at ever higher levels. This is the world of competition, not creativity.

Dissatisfaction precedes a plan for what occurs afterwards. You do not have to know your answer to reject the status-quo’s answer. Before you can pursue YOUR answer, you must, on some level, reject the easy answers offered by others.

This dissatisfaction is also deeply emotional, not logical or rational (though logic can be used to support emotions). Giving yourself logical reasons why something is wrong provides very little motivation unless its also supported by an emotional understanding. This is simply how the brain is designed. The brain is an emotional processor.

Step 2: Create a Space For New Ideas

If you’re in search for a better question, allow yourself to be a beginner again. Create a vacuum in your career, thought process, or personal life and refuse the temptation to fill it with answers right away.

Allow yourself to have more questions than answers.  People with questions explore. People with answers assume.

Step 3: Open Up Possibilities

This is a huge topic, but you can boil it down to two overarching strategies:

A) Find new inspriations: Draw from a different pool of knowledge than what everyone else is drawing from. When you change your knowledge-base, you change the direction of the thought process. For Example, comedian Steve Martin developed the idea of becoming an “anti-comedian” when he read logic equations while studying philosophy. Knowledge from outside the box was used to reshape it.

B) Try new combinations: Mix and match ideas and see what works. Think of an analogy of creativity being something like playing with Legos or Minecraft…. Very simple ideas (blocks) can be combined together to form something entirely new. Is is not the job of the blocks to be creative themselves, only the whole.

Jared Volle, M.S.

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