Tools for Thought

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to idea generation and problem solving is familiarity with our own thought process. A problem, once recognized, evokes a chain of associations drawn from memory, and the strong tendency is to apply a stock solution that worked in the past for a similar situation. The existing ideas or solutions may or may not be sufficient, but in any case we want something more original.

Many people have noticed that after grappling with a problem, a change of context is often all that’s required to evoke new insights: sleep on a problem, take a walk, take a shower. These “brain breaks” can be effective, but the results are haphazard, and the process is inefficient. There must be a more conscious way to disrupt the flow of thought from its usual pathways

Random Stimulation

When a computer program needs to generate a random number, it actually generates a pseudorandom number based on a mathematical formula — computers, after all, aren’t very random by nature. The randomness of the pseudorandom number is increased by modifying or “seeding” it with an externally derived number, like that day’s calendar date.

The human brain can benefit from a similar procedure: taking some external input to disrupt and modify its established thinking patterns. One of the most systematic methods of random stimulation, drawn from the advertising industry, is the random word technique.

The classical implementation of the random word technique is to pose your problem, then open up a book to a random page, and pick the first word on the fifth line down. The word position is arbitrary (it could just as easily be the fourth word on a first line), but the rule helps guard against selection for relevance. The object is to pick a word precisely because it’s not relevant to the problem, forcing the mind to approach the problem from a new angle.

An Example

The owner of a hamburger stand gets a call from one of his three employees. He’s quitting with no advance notice, and there’s no one to cover his shift until a replacement is found. To help the owner solve this problem, I decide to toggle from this document and choose the first noun that appears in the fourth paragraph of a Wikipedia entry I have open. The magic word is “gardens.” Thinking out loud:

• Gardens grow . . . Offer overtime to the remaining two employees to extend (grow) their shifts, minimizing the hours the owner has to cover
• Gardens . . . Plants . . . Plants need pruning . . . Cut (prune) the hours of operation to the most profitable times
• Gardens are beautiful . . . Close for remodeling (beautifying) as a pretext while hiring in the interim
• Gardens . . . Plants . . . Transplant . . . Contact neighboring food establishments to see if staff can be spared (transplanted) in exchange for another resource or favor

Granted, none of the ideas here are sensational, but I should point out that this example is an exercise I just came up with while writing this post. I didn’t pick an existing “best case” to make the exposition more persuasive.

Getting Started

Using random words is difficult at first. It’s extremely tempting to abandon the effort and pick a “better” word. The temptation should be resolutely resisted. Cherry picking randomly generated words is tantamount to choosing the word in the first place. The criterion for choosing will always be relevance, and the provocative effect is lost — there’s no broadening of context.

One allowable modification of the “no selection” rule is to use nouns instead of verbs and adjectives. Nouns tend to have richer networks of associations and are easier to work with. For instance, you might use the magazine in front of you to select a random word, and decide before opening it that you’re going to pick the first noun in the last paragraph.

When training yourself to use random words, use a timer to ensure the you spend sufficient time with each problem-word pair. Set the timer for two to five minutes for each pair, and keep generating associations until the timer goes off. Don’t stop if you get a brilliant idea; keep going until the end of the allocated time. The brilliant idea will still be there (you can and should write it down), but spending the extra time might lead to an even more brilliant one, and for training purposes, the process matters more than the content you generate.