How To Get Unstuck

You’re faced with a situation, a problem of some sort that requires your attention to solve. You’ve worked on it a lot, but now you’re stuck. You’ve looked at it endlessly, played with it, yelled at it, growled at it, even punched and kicked it. But it’s not working. You’re stuck. Know the feeling?

Other people give you great advice: “Take a different perspective!”

Yeah, great advice, but if your head over heels in a problem that’s not easy to do. They tell you what to do, but not how to do it. In this post you’ll find a handful of actionable things to do that will help you change that perspective and may inspire that breakthrough thought.

If they don’t…well then you had a lot of fun anyway

Play in a sandbox

And I mean this literally, go sit down in the sandbox, get your hands dirty and sculpt something out of the sand. The pyramids of Chichen Itza for instance, like Lisa Bettany did on the beach. Or when you have the luxury of the beach (or a really big sandbox), why don’t you make an X-wing fighter. Or anything really.

How is the problem like crafting objects in a sandbox? In what order do you build, and how’s that related to the order of crafting a solution? What tools did you use, and how are they related to crafting that solution?

Listen to your very first cd

Go to your music collection and take the very first cd you ever bought and listen to it. My first cd was Gloria Estefan’s album “Anything for you” (don’t ask), it was released under the title “Let it loose” elsewhere in the world. You may not particularly like that music anymore, or don’t want to be remembered about that first album, but the music will bring back all kinds of memories regardless. And a different perspective.

How would you have handled the problem you’re dealing at the age you bought this album?

Go watch a movie

Movies can really take your mind of everyday life. And there are often lessons hidden in there, lessons you will recognize when you’re ready for them. But they can also help you very much when you’re stuck with a problem. First they set your mind of it and you can relax a bit while watching them. And then:

How would the hero of the story have solved the problem? And the villain? Imagine the villain was the problem, how did they catch or defeat her? How does that relate to your problem?

Doodle Doodly Doo

Grab a piece of paper and a box of crayons. Doodle like you were when you were five. Draw stick figures, trees, houses, cars, trucks, airplanes, planets, flowers, birds, kissing people, knights, castles, mountains, meadows, oceans, ships, pirates. Get the creative juices flowing, go wild with colours, be unrealistic, don’t draw between the lines.

Cartoonize your problem, and draw the surroundings. Add the things that you associate with it. Does it look something like you experience it? Now add color! Grab the vibrant colors and change the picture all together.

Play tourist

Go to your local tourist office and act as a tourist. Just ask what someone visiting only for a day should’ve done in “this town”. Chances are that they come up with ideas that may sound like the standard stuff, but you have never done before. Did you ever take a guided tour through your own town? There’s more stuff to explore than you realize, more stories to be told than you could’ve imagined.

How does a guide relate to your problem? What untold stories does the problem have?

Take your camera outside

Go grab your (digital) photocamera and play outside. Take pictures of stuff you see, change perspectives, photograph from the bottom up, from high points down on things, through holes, from upclose. This exercise will activate creative thought patterns amongst other benefits. Those will spill over to other areas.

How can you do change perspectives on your problem? Are you upclose or framing it from a distance? How does it look in black and white?

Take a route less traveled

When you go to the office, the daycare centre, the mall, the supermarket or whatever place you regularly go to. Take a different route. Heck a detour even, start by driving or walking away from your destination and take some unexpected turns. Then drive towards your destination, but don’t stop when you get there. Go past it and see what’s behind it.

Visualize your problem as a location in town, then drive away from it. Circle around it and see how it looks from the other side. How does this change it?

Write, write, write

Take some nice paper, get a comfortable pen and start writing. Just write what comes to mind, and keep going and going and going and going. It’s going to be complete gibberish, but that’s okay. Write some more. At first you’ll find all kinds of thoughts, ideas and worries on the paper. Gradually it will change to more creative and fictious writing (if it hasn’t you’re not done writing yet). Worries have been trusted to the paper, there’s room for creative thought again.

Dwell in the fiction, and then think about how the problem would fit in the story you’re writing. How would the dwarves solve it? Or the angels? Or the ants? Or the leprecons?

Get drunk

One thing is for sure, perspectives change when you’re drunk Okay…getting drunk is maybe a couple of drinks too much, but there is definitely an effect that will take away inhibitions that are slowing you down in solving that problem. Just don’t implement before you sober up again

Photos by Scott Thompson, laffy4k and Boocal

Posted in spilling beans on Thu 2008.05.22