You might have heard leaders from every domain inspiring people to 'think out of the box', 'never let the creative side die' and more. But surely all of us realize that it is easier said than done. For the same reason 'thinking out of the box' always remained a mysterious concept to me. I was never able to consciously make an effort to achieve this state of mind, in fact to be honest, I believe that most of us have no clue of what this state of mind even looks like. We may have unconsciously come up with ideas in our workplace that others thought was quite out-of-the-box.
The Big Question - Can we ever make a real conscious effort to think out of the box? And if we can, where do we begin?
Recently, I was able to make some headway towards an answer. The clues came from a very unexpected place. I was learning about Quantum Physics (was reading this) which showed me how our most basic human intuitions are violated in the world of sub-atomic particles. With a little more research I found that we are born with a clean slate, free of all intuitions. But, within months we develop really strong beliefs about the world that are nearly impossible to give up later, and become our 'Intuition'.
For example, our belief that objects keep existing even when we are not looking at them. It is such a taken for granted idea, that it is plain ridiculous to even consider the possibility that an object may stop existing when we are not looking at it. This human intuition is called 'Object Permanence'. I was so astounded to learn about these intuitions that I was totally inspired to share them with everyone. If you're interested, you can find my writeup here - https://goo.gl/RXN7zv
This lit a spark in my head - Intuitions!
Intuitions Leading To Complacency
While there is no doubt that our intuitions may give us immense faith while making risky decisions, they may also be the cause for our laid back attitude or complacency at most other times. User growth in startups is one such field where reality may turn out to be quite different than our intuitive expectations.
I never tire of quoting Paul Graham's brilliant essay for startups - Do Things That Don't Scale. He points at how counter-intuitive it can be to "recruit users manually". Our intuitions make us believe that doing such a thing would be so tedious and could never help achieve millions of users for the company. Graham mentions that the reasons founders ignore this path is because of their shyness, laziness and also due to initially small numbers that aren't so impressive. But counter-intuitively, this approach actually helps build close customer relations and gets your customers talking about your service, which in turn may lead to successful network effects and exponential growth.
Challenging Intuitions May Open New Avenues
Such examples where companies have tried counter-intuitive approaches and succeeded, make me believe that this may be somewhat of a blueprint for a successful career too. Think of all the product & service related decisions we take at work. And then also those decisions that decide our career & life path, like an opportunity to move to a new city, to present at a seminar, to teach a class of new hires, to share your industry insights in an article and more. Most of the times, our gut is in the wrong place when making these decisions. It is fearful and shy and lazy. Making a conscious effort to take these chances even when our gut may be screaming in discomfort, may lead us to interesting new avenues.
So coming back to our big question. I think it is possible to make a conscious effort to think out of the box. And the way to do it might just be as simple as giving up what your intuitions say (your gut says) and doing things with a more open attitude.
'Thinking out of the box' may just be similar to 'Thinking Un-intuitively'.