Fish In A Bowl- An Introspective Look At Thinking Outside The Box

Thinking outside the box is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel, creative and smart thinking.
This is sometimes called a process of lateral thought. The catchphrase, or cliché, has become widely used in business environments, especially by management consultants and executive coaches, and has spawned a number of advertising slogans.

Its Saturday Night, and I guess this is my new version of
Saturday Night Live!  There are now a few young ladies helping to spread the word in a few places on the web, which requires that I keep this faucert flowing even more frequently, thanks to YOU!

When searching for something to write about that may be of interest, I believe it was through being near Taco Bell while I was out earlier, that inspired this line of thought since their new slogan is to
Think outside the bun .

I hear the term used quite frequently, and have often wondered what it was attempting to convey, because the way my mind works, if a person is thinking outside the box, it very well indicates that there is a box that exists, and thinking outside of it, would indicate the thinker to be inside of it, at least according my my perception. Like when you look outside the window, ordinarily, at least in English, it means that you are on the inside looking out.

Anyhow, I just followed my usual routine by going to Google and typing in the prhase, and what I found was fairly interesting yet simple, at least for me.

Here is what they say.

The origin of the phrase is somewhat obscure. John Adair claims to have introduced the problem in 1969[1]. Management consultant Mike Vance has claimed that the use of the nine-dot puzzle in consultancy circles stems from the corporate culture of the Walt Disney Company, where the puzzle was used in-house.[2] Both Martin Kihn of Fast Company[3] and the Random House Word Mavens[4] agree that the phrase relates to a traditional topographical puzzle called the nine dots puzzle.

Ok, lets see if we can make this simple.The nine dot puzzle looks like this

The goal of the puzzle is to link all 9 dots using four straight lines or less, without lifting the pen.

Ok, if you read the article at wikipedia , you will see the solution that they give or you can wait until the end of this post.

Anyhow, the story can actually get interesting when I remember back to childhood, where the training in elementery school was to get me to clolorin  between the lines, and I just seemed to prefer some of my art to exceed the boundaries.

As a child, I thought it was this way with everyone, and the training was to simply help an individual to stay within the boundaries more effectively even though it was not really normal behavior. Its a long story in regards to all that proceeded from that point in my life , yet as a grown up, I have been exposed to scenarios in which executives in corporate culture as well as instructors at institues of higher learning now need to encourage and retrain their staff membersand students to think outside the box.

Between us, the people who I surround myself with have a classification for people who dont think this way (outside the box) without being encouraged and trained, and the term is known as L7 squares. I added an image of the rubix cubepuzzle  game from the 80’sto remind myself, that as a child, I also wondered why individuals assumed that the goal of the puzzle was to arrange all of the squares to be the same on each side. There are reasons why this could make sense, like most leaves on a tree are green, and ocean water is blue for example. On the other hand, the closet which is behind me right now has plenty of different colors of clothing, and they all seem to get along great with each other while they are in there. Then again, with the rubix cube, I come from the type of environment where if we wanted to put the pieces in order so that the colors match, we would just dissect the puzzle, then reinsert the pieces into the core mechanism which rotates the pieces. I guess if you wanted to look busy or smart, you could spend time figuring it out by twisting and turning the cube, so, to each his own.

Anyhow, this post wasnt meant to be long and drawn out, but I decided to post it for some relevant reasons, as the cubes from rubix somehow remind me of what I see much of these days, which are individuals inside of boxes, like on Facebook,Twitter or Myspace and even the world at large in a in the box society. Im sure it will come to me soon why this is taking place, similar to the reason why I am looking into a box as I type this,yet my usual method seems to work best, which is to do what comes naturally. For example, my thumbnail credit images shows a young lady standing next to me in a totally opposite shade of color. There are two of us in one image, yet I hope in your mind, it shows that we um..MATCH.

In closing, the solution to the nine dot puzzle is as follows.

One of many solutions to the puzzle is to go beyond the boundaries to link all dots in 4 straight lines.

In closing, you can ponder on the following question for some effective mental stimulation.

Are these fish aware of the fact that they are inside of a bowl?

We are finished for today, the first day of August, so go have some fun and quit trying to think so hard!

See You At The Top
( And Bring A Friend!!)

Written By
R.Branch
Code Name
Scotty Pimpin