To think creatively

To think creatively, cast aside your established assumptions.

In 1799, French soldiers campaigning through Egypt made an amazing find – an ancient stone with engraved writing in three scripts. It was dubbed the Rosetta Stone, and featured writing in ancient Greek, demotic Egyptian, and Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Since linguists already knew ancient Greek, they were confident that deciphering the other two languages would be a breeze. But it wasn’t. Researchers struggled to make sense of the hieroglyphs. Since the glyphs were small pictures, translators assumed they were symbols that stood for whole words. Still, they couldn’t crack the code.

Then a young linguist named Jean-François Champollion had an idea: what if hieroglyphics were phonetic and stood for sounds instead of words? In an instant, everything became clear. By questioning one underlying premise, Champollion opened up a new way to see the world.

As the story of the Rosetta Stone shows, often the first step in developing new ideas is questioning old ones. It sounds straightforward enough, but it can be surprisingly difficult.

Because our established ways of perceiving the world can be so ingrained, they’re practically invisible. That’s why it takes conscious effort to make even small logical leaps, even if, in retrospect, the ideas we come up with seem obvious.

Consider a famous brainteaser like Dunker’s Candle. You’re given a candle, some matches, and a box of tacks. Your job is to stick the candle to the wall and light it. At first, it seems impossible. The tacks aren’t long enough to pin the candle up. But then you change your assumption about the box of tacks. Couldn’t that box be pinned to the wall? Well, now you have a shelf for the candle. Problem solved.

Ditching assumptions opens new paths forward, and the best way to start shaking things up is with lots of trial and error. By constantly interacting with the world in new ways, you’ll find that many of your old beliefs don’t hold up in every situation. Even things that seem completely settled can be turned upside down when put in a new context.

Educator Destin Sandlin demonstrates this with a stunt called the Backwards Brain Cycle. He built a custom bike with inverted steering so that turning the handlebars left turns the bike right, and turning the handlebars right makes the bike go left. This change seems tiny, but riding it requires a whole new way of balancing your body. Even experienced cyclists who “know” how to ride a bike struggle. It just goes to show that their assumed knowledge, like everyone else’s, is always incomplete.