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OBLIQUE SOLUTIONS

  • State the problem in words as clearly as possible

  • Only one element of each kind

  • What would your closest friend do?

  • What to increase? What to reduce?

  • Are there sections? Consider transitions

  • Try faking it!

  • Honor thy error as a hidden intention

  • Ask your body

  • What would a child ask?  The Three Why's Men

  • Courage!

  • " I just folded up the umbrella....."

  • Go ahead and light the match

  • Brag a little

  • Go to an extreme, come back to a more comfortable place

  • What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving

  • Shut the door and listen from outside

  • Breathe deeply

  • Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action

  • Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group

  • Look at the order in which you do things

  • What wouldn't you do?

  • How would you explain it to a child?

  • Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

  • Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

  • Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor

  • Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

  • Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

  • Don't be frightened of clichés

  • Cluster analysis

  • You can only make one dot at a time

  • Use an old idea

  • Use `unqualified' people

  • Faced with a choice, do both

  • Infinitesimal gradations

  • It is quite possible (after all)

  • Emphasize the flaws

  • Simply a matter of work

  • Work at a different speed

  •  Use an unacceptable color

  • Is something missing?

  • Abandon normal instructions

  • What are you really thinking about just now?

  • Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them

  • Emphasize the differences

  • Get dirty

  • Speak in a child's voice

  • Turn it upside down

  • Give the game away

  • He who MUST play, may NOT play

  • Mute and continue

  • Give way to your worst impulse

  • A line has two sides

  • Reverse

  • Don't be frightened to display your talents

  • Imagine the Music

  • Do the words need changing?

  • Look from new perspective - bottom up or top down

GOT A PROBLEM? TRY AN OBLIQUE SOLUTION TO SOLVE IT!

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