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 [...]

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Flowscaping is a cognitive mapping technique pioneered by Edward de Bono in the 1990s that never caught on the way some of his trademark techniques and concepts have (Six Thinking Hats, the term “Lateral Thinking”). A flowscape is designed to give the thinker a topographical view of his or her stream of consciousness around an [...]

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David Lynch has haunted me for years. Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive are two of my favorite films. Where most filmmakers succeed or fail on their strength as narrators, Lynch’s films are streams of rich archetypes that transcend the usual demand for beginning, middle and end. A single frame may have more emotional impact than an [...]

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Distributed cognition lies at the heart of many creativity and productivity systems. It’s basically a fancy term for a two-step process: Collecting thoughts Organizing them Collecting thoughts means externalizing them in some way, usually onto paper or computer. Once we get them out of the mind’s short-term memory, we create space, “mental RAM,” to have [...]

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