Out-of-the-box thinking from Justin from Ideapod - what about using it for stroke?

 I consider everyone in stroke too fucking hidebound to have any original ideas on how to solve stroke. I have ten thousands, they're sprinkled through my 28,553 posts. Every day I come up with more, that's how much stroke research is out there!

Send me hate mail on this: oc1dean@gmail.com. I'll print your complete statement with your name and my response in my blog. Or are you afraid to engage with my stroke-addled mind? I need an explanation of your incompetence on why you're not solving stroke.

out-of-the-box thinking from Justin from Ideapod

Hi there,

The scene: A psychology lab.

The year: 1945…

On the table in front of you: A candle, a box of thumbtacks, and some matches.

Your task? Fix the candle to the wall so it can burn without dripping wax on the table below.

On the surface, it seems simple. But this experiment by psychologist Karl Duncker didn't go well for most of its participants.

Most people failed.

They tried tacking the candle directly to the wall... the candle was too thick.
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They tried melting the wax then pinning it... that didn't work either.

The solution was staring them in the face, but they couldn't see it.

Use the box. Tack it to the wall and place the candle inside.

Why am I telling you this story? Because this experiment is where the phrase "thinking outside the box" comes from.

And this phrase has come to shape how we’ve viewed creativity and problem-solving ever since.

The whole point of Duncker’s experiment was to demonstrate that we’re often so conditioned to think in a certain way that we can lose our ability to see obvious alternatives.

And to me, that’s profound.

It's certainly the case that MY greatest breakthroughs often come when I challenge my assumptions and embrace uncertainty.

Things go more smoothly when I don’t have to have all the answers.

And I get much better results when I’m willing to question everything about my decisions and processes.

The first step in thinking outside the box is becoming aware that you HAVE these mental boxes.

They tend to be the areas where you feel defensive or are afraid to be wrong.

Sometimes I have to take a big step back and examine my assumptions before I can see a different way of doing things.