There is nothing as “Out of Box " thinking!

It was one of those times when you subtly try to impress your company by your “out of box” thinking and end up making fool of yourself, just to make the matter worse this time the company was too smart to see my attempts inside out and very brutally dismissed it all! But the good thing that came out of the entire drama was an intriguing discussion on what exactly is “out of box” thinking.  If we are not born with that sort of intellect is there any scope that we can get it/ learn it from somewhere.

The discussion started with the generic interpretation of intellect, not many of us will deny that the guy who scored maximum in school exams was the one who was tagged as “Intellectual” and we complacently believed it. Since then our mind has made this as a boxed definition, a pattern of what being an “Intellectual” mean.

Second point that was discussed was “When do you practice thinking?” I was anyways not very comfortable with the question, why the hell do I have to practice thinking it’s just a means by which you try to sort out your problems, isn’t it? I remember ever since I appended startups as my area of interest I am trying to find out problems that my amazing idea can sort out for people and hence make money from it, I am restlessly trying to excavate problems just to come out with a good business idea. Although back in my mind the initial idea behind Twitter did distract me sometimes thinking as to what problem did it sort and why did it even start. Anyways getting back to the point I answered I practice thinking to solve a problem. I thought that was the most concise and clear reply I could give for this question but to my surprise he (company) laughed and declared “I can never think Out of Box”. Honestly that really hit me considering already I was deeply saddened by the absence of Chocó brownie missing on my plate which he ate while I was trying to think.

What I realized is that my mind has boxed thinking as mere “Problem solving technique”, it may be because we never had Thinking as a subject in our school/college etc... And we always practiced it while we are on some issue which

1.       Needed urgent attention

2.      Promised immediate gratification if solved successfully.

So in our day to day practice we try to gather information around the problem and try to eliminate the patterns which are new to our mind and choose the solution that best fits the pattern already set in our mind through our past experiences, knowledge or previously locked assumptions. We very graciously eliminate any new assumption and thus bolt our self in the existing dominant patterns/boxes. However Thinking in reality has many facet to it, problem solving is just one plot where we practice it extensively.

 In order to make an “Out of Box” statement you have to carve out your own BOX first. We very often misjudge creativity with randomness/chances but I was surprised to discover creativity can also be constructively practiced with various design models (Six Thinking Hats/ CORT method), it involves change in perception, taking risks, provocation.  Horizontal thinking implies our dream stage and vertical stage implies the methodical implementation/execution stage, design thinking lies in between these stages.

So I guess Twitter was not launched to solve any problem it was launched to experiment one of these newly designed boxes (different medium of communication) and all the risks paid off today. As for my restless mind I got some respite in the fact that I can stop identifying JUST the problem to start and try practicing to carve a NEW BOX J.

 

There is nothing as “Out of Box thinking”!

It was one of those times when you subtly try to impress your company by your “out of box” thinking and end up making fool of yourself, just to make the matter worse this time the company was too smart to see my attempts inside out and very brutally dismissed it all! But the good thing that came out of the entire drama was an intriguing discussion on what exactly is “out of box” thinking.  If we are not born with that sort of intellect is there any scope that we can get it/ learn it from somewhere.

The discussion started with the generic interpretation of intellect, not many of us will deny that the guy who scored maximum in school exams was the one who was tagged as “Intellectual” and we complacently believed it. Since then our mind has made this as a boxed definition, a pattern of what being an “Intellectual” mean.

Second point that was discussed was “When do you practice thinking?” I was anyways not very comfortable with the question, why the hell do I have to practice thinking it’s just a means by which you try to sort out your problems, isn’t it? I remember ever since I appended startups as my area of interest I am trying to find out problems that my amazing idea can sort out for people and hence make money from it, I am restlessly trying to excavate problems just to come out with a good business idea. Although back in my mind the initial idea behind Twitter did distract me sometimes thinking as to what problem did it sort and why did it even start. Anyways getting back to the point I answered I practice thinking to solve a problem. I thought that was the most concise and clear reply I could give for this question but to my surprise he (company) laughed and declared “I can never think Out of Box”. Honestly that really hit me considering already I was deeply saddened by the absence of Chocó brownie missing on my plate which he ate while I was trying to think.

What I realized is that my mind has boxed thinking as mere “Problem solving technique”, it may be because we never had Thinking as a subject in our school/college etc... And we always practiced it while we are on some issue which

1.       Needed urgent attention

2.      Promised immediate gratification if solved successfully.

So in our day to day practice we try to gather information around the problem and try to eliminate the patterns which are new to our mind and choose the solution that best fits the pattern already set in our mind through our past experiences, knowledge or previously locked assumptions. We very graciously eliminate any new assumption and thus bolt our self in the existing dominant patterns/boxes. However Thinking in reality has many facet to it, problem solving is just one plot where we practice it extensively.

 In order to make an “Out of Box” statement you have to carve out your own BOX first. We very often misjudge creativity with randomness/chances but I was surprised to discover creativity can also be constructively practiced with various design models (Six Thinking Hats/ CORT method), it involves change in perception, taking risks, provocation.  Horizontal thinking implies our dream stage and vertical stage implies the methodical implementation/execution stage, design thinking lies in between these stages.

So I guess Twitter was not launched to solve any problem it was launched to experiment one of these newly designed boxes (different medium of communication) and all the risks paid off today. As for my restless mind I got some respite in the fact that I can stop identifying JUST the problem to start and try practicing to carve a NEW BOX J.

ROI of reading a book!

Disclaimer: If only you like to read a lot of good books please go ahead.

I have heard it quite a number of times about the importance of reading a book and to be honest I don’t deny it. If nothing else it makes you feel intellectual, boosts your social image and opens your mind to different perspective. But having read a decent number of books I sometimes wonder if the money I spend on reading a book  is actually worth it, and if it is worth then do we know how to efficiently harness the returns every book offers. We all choose books as per our area of interest defined back in our mind or accepted explicitly and we tend to read books that sync up with it (poetry, management, science fiction, psychology, philosophy, fashion) etc.. But after a point the takeaways from all these books feels the same. Let me try explaining it category wise:

Autobiography/Biography:

Timeline-15 days: As soon as you are done with the book you do remember the details about that person (Andre Agassi never wanted to play Tennis, Lance Armstrong went through gruesome pain while he underwent the surgery etc.)

Timeline-40 days : Generally these are successful people who had a struggling childhood, they started whatever they are good at, at really young age, there take on the situations (which were generally not rosy) was positive or they ended up being a drug addict, screwed up completely etc. . but finally they persevere, held their head high in the darkest of the times and came out with flying colors. And finally some dramatic incidents changed the course of their quest and they ended up being a great person they are today. Needless to mention they achieved what they ended up with only because they failed at so many other things.

Timeline- ever after: What you always knew about that person only with some fine-tuning.

Non Fiction:

Books on cities/countries (e.g. Mumbai, Iran):

Timeline -40 days and ever after: An opportunist city for struggling writers, painters, singers, dancers, actors, businesses etc… Haven for dreams, prostitution, crippling buildings, indifferent governance, films, drugs, mafia, gang lords, corruption etc.. Which are the best places to get drugs from and what powers does Shiv Sena have on the city and how everybody there kow tows them just to save their asses. How disturbing life does a prostitute have, how and which social lymph fucked them for how much money, their desperation to articulate their life story and the never ending quest to find that ultimate love, how mafia is deep-seated till the grass root level of the society and how people in slums struggle to make their ends meet.

South West Asia is always about grotesque and miserable condition of females with a life like that of a slave.  Struggling to either get out of that place or retire in submission of their ill fate. Male chauvinism haunts the underdeveloped and archaic society, government plagued with terrorism and militancy and it always paints a gloomy and depressing world in my head.

I wonder what more did I learn other than what I read before buying the book based on the reviews and of course popularity for the same.  Of course you do enjoy the style of writing and the narration with the imaginative picture you envisage while you are on the GO but are these intangibles included in the ROI. Also what sort of stories do we discuss about the book with our fellow bibliophiles, do we really discuss the writing style? Or we end our discussion with just the name of the latest book we read.

Books on Management

Marketing/Branding

Timeline- 15 days: Just mention a problem to me and I know I’ll be able to help you to market your product. I have all the validated theories packed in my mind and I feel pretty good about it.

Timeline - 40 days and ever after: Time when you see a surge in your confidence level after reading that book. You feel yourself equipped with latest trend and modern theories which marketing gurus somewhere in the world are using. Books on SEO marketing, social media marketing, blogging etc… teaching you the basics of consumer psychology with detailed logical explanation.  I remember a book I read on Twitter and its various application which can be used to harness it for business (now I don’t even remember its name or anything that it elicit) and I feel pretty disappointed about it.

Self Help Book

Timeline- 15 days: I know next time when I’ll face a situation I am going to survive it unlike last time. I am going to be positive and will try to put my six thinking hats to evaluate it. Or when I am choosing I am going to not go with my automatic system but will logically siphon off the heuristics biases which I discovered in my decisions last time.

(I am currently in this timeline, will post in sometime which books inspired me to learn this laterJ )

Timeline- 40 days: I am going to be positive in every situation. Which I must honestly confess it still not the case with me,  I still take the same time to cope with the situation.

These are couple of genres I mentioned but the basis of the entire post is that mere reading a book doesn’t necessarily give you the expected ROI,  the real investment lies not in spending the money but it is in the time we spend while we read and most importantly the time we spend after we are done reading. Write, discuss and introspect (validate the theory/concepts with incidents of your life and not just the case studies they discuss) the book needs to be not just read but one should be able to feel it while and after reading if we really seek a return from it. Move beyond the generic discussions with your friends and always always try to write a review of the book for yourself so that when you move to the 16^th day of reading you have something to again think about.

Observations

Thought of sharing couple of things I closely observed recently 1. Cooking awesome food sucks if you happen to be the only one eating it. 2. Dance no doubt is the best exercise to de stress yourself. 3. FRIENDS is still the best series to watch over and over again. 4. Chai with a stranger in rains still makes you feel happy. 5. You still find people getting emotional on a sad (teary) climax of a movie. 6. You still make a book shopping decision based on book colour and title. (offline mode) 7. Cracking a daily crossword all by yourself can definitely give you a good night sleep. 8. Gifts and surprises are the best thing to happen in gloomiest days. 9. Men enjoy gossip as much as women do. 10. An unexpected phone call from your first crush still gives you goose bumps. 11. Villagers will love you from all their heart if you happen to speak in their language. 12. People/Strangers you meet while you travel will always remain in your contact list, even if you switch your phones zillion times. (even though you will never ever make a call to them) 13. Nothing gives you more joy than watching your clean cupboard, after a strenuous cleaning expedition. Not to forget the sight and memories attached with your long lost beautiful clothes you rediscover. 14. Change is always good, more so if you don’t happen to see its result immediately. There are many more which I keep writing down in my mini diary, but it really feels nice to see and experience these things again and again. Feels human 