Creative Think

Think Like A Wise Fool

It's time for one of my very favorite creative thinking strategies:

Think Like A Wise Fool

Image from the Wise Fool

Carrying the strategy of "looking at things differently" to extremes brings us to the realm of the wise fool, the being for whom everyday ways of understanding have little meaning.

It's the wise fool's job to extol the trivial, trifle with the exalted, and parody the common perception of a situation. In doing so, the wise fool makes us conscious of the habits we take for granted and rarely question. A good fool needs to be part actor and part poet, part philosopher and part psychologist.

And throughout history, the wise fool has been consulted by Egyptian pharaohs and Babylonian kings, Chinese emperors, Greeks tyrants, and Hopi Indian chiefs.

The wise fool will reverse our standard assumptions. He'll say, "If a man is sitting on a horse facing the rear, why do we assume that it is the man who is backwards, and not the horse?"

The wise fool notices things that other people overlook. He might ask, "Why do people who pour cream into their coffee do so after the coffee is already in the cup, rather than pouring the cream in first and saving themselves the trouble of stirring?"

The wise fool can also be irreverent. He'll pose riddles such as,

"What does a rich man put in his pocket that the poor man throws away?" When he answers, "Snot," he forces us to re-examine the sanctity of our everyday rituals.

The wise fool can be cryptic. He'll say the best way to see something is with your ears. Initially, this may seem weird, but after you've thought about it, you might agree that listening to a story conjures up more images than watching television.

The wise fool can be absurd. Having lost his donkey, a fool got down on his knees and began thanking God. A passerby saw him and asked, "Your donkey is missing; why are you thanking God?" The fool replied, "I'm thanking Him for seeing to it that I wasn't riding him at the time. Otherwise, I would be missing as well."

The wise fool will take the contrary position in most conversations. Whereas many people would agree that, "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing well," The fool might say,

"You don't have to do things well! Indeed, it's okay to do them poorly; otherwise you'll never let yourself be a beginner at a new activity."

The great benefit of the fool's antics and observations is that they stimulate our thinking. They jolt us in the same way that a splash of cold water awakens us when we are drowsy.

Exercise: Where has "thinking like a wise fool" helped you look at a problem in a helpful way?

©Roger von Oech

Name This Decade Contest!

Update: We've got some winners! Go to the bottom.

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Well, this decade is almost gone (or 82% gone to be precise). And still no name!

A little over eight years ago in January, 2000, I thought this decade would be known as the "oohs" (pronounced "ooze") because it every year in it had two (or more) zeroes and they looked like the "o's" in "oohs." So obvious!

If that didn't happen, then at the very least I thought this time period would come to be called the "ohs" (pronounced like "those" without the "th").

Well, neither of those caught on. Hmmm.

I guess we've got an opportunity.

Flex your creative muscles and come up with a fun and/or descriptive moniker for this decade. (I'm interested to see what you come up with.)

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Thanks for the great suggestions (keep 'em coming). My two favorites are:

• "The Double Ohs" (I think I'd even use this one, such as five years from now I might say, "Do you remember what you were doing with Jim back in the early double ohs?"
• "The Pre-Teens" (This is just plain clever and funny. I don't know, though, if I would actually use it.)

Happy Birthday Bach!

Happy Birthday Johann Sebastian Bach, born on this day (March 21) in 1685. His music, the fusion of a powerful intellect and an unshakable faith, is capable of both melodic simplicity (e.g.,"Sheep May Safely Graze") and elaborate complexity (e.g., "The Art of the Fugue").

We are very fortunate that Bach lived and abundantly applied his gift. He is one of those rare individuals about whom it can be said, "Had he never been born, we'd all be the poorer."

Bach has long been one of my very favorite creative muses. When I'm in need of inspiration, I can listen to Bach for days on end. I have many favorites, but here a few quick ones:

   • The Goldberg Variations
   • "Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme" cantata
   • Cellos Suites
   • Sonatas  1-6 BMV 525-530 (especially #6) 
   • The Well-Tempered Clavier

What are your favorite Bach pieces?

Uri Caine in Concert

Last night I went to see Uri Caine in a solo piano concert at Stanford. Caine is a virtuoso classical and jazz pianist, jazz ensemble leader, composer, and classical music interpretter.

Caine performed an all Mahler program. My favorite was his interpretation of the Adagietto (fourth movement) of Symphony #5. (He also did movements from Sym. #1, #2, and #5.)

Caine's performance was electric, confident, searching, and playful. At times his playing is literal: he delicately picks out the notes like stars in the sky. But more often, his MO was to take Mahler's themes and run them through his vivid imagination to create a wild and moving amalgam of sounds and feelings. Thus, Caine is able to make Mahler sound like Fats Waller, Glenn Gould, PDQ Bach, and Keith Jarrett. A true tour de force.

The second half of his program was comprised of Caine's takes on Mahler lieder (from the Song of the Earth and The Boy's Magic Horn). He'd take a three minute song and run with it for ten minutes — entertaining the audience all the way with his variations. For example, in the "Farewell" song, he seamlessly brought Stravinsky and Mahler together in ways neither could have ever imagined.

I first became aware of Uri Caine a little over a year ago when I did a post on Bach's Goldberg Variations ("Waking Up with the Goldberg Variations"). One reader suggested that I check out Caine's interpretation of the Goldbergs. I did, and I was absolutely floored (and have listened to it scores of times since). I highly recommend it. Caine's rendition of Wagner is also worth listening to.

Thank you for a delightful evening, Uri.

Don't Force It

Let's check in with the Creative Whack Pack for some inspiration. Today's card is "Don't Force It." This is what it says.

An architect built a cluster of office buildings around a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the sidewalks. "Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings," was his reply.

By late summer the new lawn was laced with paths of trodden grass between the buildings. These paths turned in easy curves and were sized according to traffic flow.

In the fall, the architect simply paved the paths. Not only were the paths beautiful, they responded directly to user needs.

By putting an idea on your mental back burner, you allow yourself to put your problem in perspective. Sometimes we get so close to the problem that we lose sight of what we're trying to accomplish.

One advertising man told me that his strategy for coming up with ideas is to spend six weeks inundating himself with information about the client and its market. Then he'll go fishing for three days, and "let the ideas percolate their way to the top." Moral: If you allow yourself to get away from your problem, you put yourself in a position to see the big picture.

As the poet Doug King says:

"Learn to pause . . . or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you."

What are you forcing in your issue? Where can you back off? Where has pausing helped you be more creative?

(Me? I'm going to the movies this afternoon!)

Beautiful Naked Women Attract Visitors

How to attract visitors?

During the year and a half I've been blogging, I written over 250 posts.

But one in particular, written well over a year ago, is still responsible for nearly 15% of all my daily visitors. People from all over the world come to see this post — day in, day out. Month in, month out. Amazing!

I wrote this particular post when I was in Berlin in February, 2007 and its subject matter was outdoor advertising along the famed Unter den Linden.

This is what I called the post: Giant Beautiful Naked Older Women in Public! Take a moment to check it out.

I thought it was a straight-forward post. But when I playfully wrote the title, I wasn't thinking of what the search engines would do with it.

It turns out that a lot of people go to Google and type in some variant of (can you imagine?):

• Naked women
• Older naked women
• Beautiful naked women
• Naked women in public

Because I have a Google Page Rank Number of 5, the above post usually ends up on page one of the seeker's query results. Then the seeker (with high hopes!) clicks on the link and ends up at the above post on my site. I have a feeling they are usually disappointed. Sometimes they look around further on my blog, but most of the time they go back to their Google query results.

This is what I've learned: Sex seems to attract visitors on the Internet! See if it works for you.

Avoid Arrogance

I've been reading the papers today. Hmmm. To sort things out I thought I'd draw some inspiration from the trusty Creative Whack Pack. Here goes. It's "Avoid Arrogance." Let's see what it says.

On the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte smugly assured his generals: "I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad soldiers; we will settle this matter by lunchtime."

There is a fine line between a healthy sense of one's abilities and arrogance. If you're repeatedly successful, you're tempted to believe that you've found the formula for success and are no longer subject to human fallibility.

This is devastating to the creative process; in a world that is continually changing, every right idea is eventually the wrong one.

With an arrogant attitude, you cease paying attention to different points of view and information that contradicts your beliefs. You screen out the "boos," and amplify the "hurrahs."

Don't be blinded by arrogance. A little humility can help you steer clear of disaster.

Where is arrogance affecting you? How has it clouded how you think about your problem? Where is your ego interfering with thinking of alternatives?

Farewell to "The Wire"

I just got back from my trip to east Asia — in time to catch the series finale of HBO's "The Wire." It did not disappoint.

I'd say that "The Wire" is one of the top five or six series I've ever watched on television. It's set in the Baltimore of 2002-2008 and deals with the interplay of its police force and the drug community. The writing is outstanding, and the characters are intriguing. I especially liked seasons three and four.

My recommendation: rent the DVDs. I give it a big thumbs up! You will not be disappointed.

Good luck to you, David Simon.

Vietnam Sunrise

After Hanoi, we headed off to Hoi An, the ancient trading port city on the central coast (it's about 40 kilometers south of the famous Vietnam war era R&R area "China Beach"). It's a great place to relax, and the countryside is wonderfully bucolic.

Below is a Pacific Ocean sunrise (unusual for us; most of our colorful sun activities in California are sunsets). Those are fishing boats on the horizon.

This was also Wendy's birthday, and we celebrated all day long — capped off with two cakes. What a joyous time! Shown below are Wendy, me, and two Vietnamese friends.

Today we're off to Hong Kong to talk with our Ball of Whacks people.

Where John McCain Was Shot Down and Imprisoned

Wendy and I are in Hanoi now (my second trip to Vietnam, her first). It's a vibrant, thriving place that reminds a little of Paris.

When I was here before, I realized that the Vietnamese had long ago moved past their wars of independence (1945-1975). Indeed two-thirds of the Vietnamese population has been born after 1975.

But I was curious about the American pilots that had been shot down and imprisoned in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" — in particular John McCain.

Above is a monument at Truc Bach Lake which the Vietnamese put up to memorialize the shooting down of John McCain. The text reads (in Vietnamese) along the lines: "On October 26, 1967, Lt. John McCain in his A4 B1 was shot down in this lake." The image at the center shows McCain (hands raised) surrendering.

McCain was fortunate. After he had bombed a power station in downtown Hanoi, his plane was shot down and he crashed in the Truc Bach Lake (shown behind the monument in the above photo). Had he crashed on land, he would have been killed. North Vietnamese civilians went out to the center of the lake and pulled McCain out of the wreckage.

McCain was badly wounded. Shown above is a North Vietnamese doctor treating the surviving crash victim.

McCain then was put in the infamous Hoa Lo Prison. This ghastly, brutal place was built by the French in 1896 to incarcerate and torture Vietnamese felons and subversives. If you've seen the 1973 film Papillon, you've got an idea what Hoa Lo was like. The colonial French were good at prisons. Hoa Lo even had its own guillotine (which was used often).

Between 1964 and 1973, Hoa Lo was used for imprisoning American pilots who were shot down. Shown above is a cell door.

Shown above is a typical Hoa Lo cell which would have been shared by four or five American prisoners.

John McCain spent five and half years here, and was released with the other POWs in 1973.

In the spring of 2000, he returned to Hoa Lo. There are photos of his return on display at the prison. Having put his POW experience long behind him, McCain did not seem bitter at all.

That was another era.