We humans love convenience. When the brain finds a conceivable “highway,” a thought pattern that works, it tends to continue back and forth along that path day after day. It feels safe, secure, and requires minimal effort. But it’s also what often makes us miss alternative routes, small paths that can lead to unexpected and fruitful ideas. It’s all about the courage to get a little lost in order to find something truly new.
The obvious route and the hidden opportunities
Research from Oxford and Cambridge shows that many London commuters don’t use the best route to work. When a train strike in 2014 forced some of them to try another route, about one in twenty commuters discovered that the new route was better and continued to use it even after traffic returned to normal (University of Cambridge). Those who were stuck in the habit had never even considered the alternative routes until they were forced to try them. It is this insight that shows how strongly habits control us and how good we feel when we dare to experiment.
The highways grows with habit
Imagine thought patterns as a physical road. The more people who walk the same road, the wider and easier it becomes. This is how highways are built in the brain, the roads of habits. But the small paths, the creative side tracks, are barely visible. They are narrow, winding and require courage to try. But they often lead to places of greater insight, joy and new understanding.
Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking
Edward de Bono made it his mission to show that thinking does not have to be linear nor vertical. He argued for lateral thinking, that we consciously need to take side tracks, skip logical steps and introduce unexpected perspectives. His methods, such as the six thinking hats, help us consciously break our thinking habits. When our thoughts are forced to take a side track, doors open to new ideas that would otherwise never appear.
When sidetracks are the best
Sidetracks are especially effective when we get stuck in complex problems, when there is no clear path forward, or when we need new energy. A creative thought may first be awakened when we ask things that actually feel absurd: How would a superhero solve this? What happens if we turn the problem upside down, or look at it through the perspective of a musician, an architect, or a child?
Einstein’s words ring in my mind: imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge takes us along the highway, but imagination opens up paths we never knew existed.
A real-life story
Many years ago, I worked on a project with a team that was stuck in their ideation process. Meetings had stagnated and all the ideas ended up in the same place. I asked the group to imagine that their competitor was doing the exact opposite of what they planned. The result: suddenly new thoughts, other markets, other target groups, other product concepts opened up. The ideas sprouted when thoughts were forced to take a different path. It was clear that their brains were given a new path to walk on.
Step-by-step: taking the creative sidetrack
- First, become aware of what your habits are. What your thought patterns are. Where do your idea blocks occur?
- Force yourself outside the comfort of your habits. Try a different “sidetrack”.
- Read something unexpected or change the conversation or the location. Forbid yourself from thinking about what comes to mind first.
- Describe the problem in a completely different way. If you are always starting to talk about costs, formulate it as energy or investment. Liken it to something else.
- Use a structured method such as lateral thinking, de Bono methods, a metaphor or random stimuli, to break linearity.
- Reflect on what happened in your brain when you took the new path, what started it? What did you suddenly see?
- Then choose a new path and follow it. Often it is better than you thought.
Build more small paths than highways
The highways of the brain are convenient. They require no effort and get you there quickly. But to be creative, to grow and discover, we need to build more paths. It takes courage, small leaps of thought, and the habit of taking a different path even when it feels stupid. But that’s where the ideas hide. Where dreams are set free. Where creativity truly begins to live.
