Lateral Thinking Tool #1 - The Creative Pause

In his book Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas Edward de Bono gives a number of lateral thinking "tools". The first one that he mentions is also the simplest, which he calls the "Creative Pause".

It is important to note, however, that simple does NOT mean ineffective. In fact, I think it is an extremely powerful and important thinking tool. Let's take a look at what the tool is.

The Creative Pause
You can use this thinking tool at any time, but its intent is that you use it when there is no apparent problem or issue that requires thinking. Things are going along smoothly.

And so the Creative Pause is this:

Simply take a pause in your thinking for about 20 seconds as you consider something.

"There should be a new idea here."

"There could be a new idea here."

"I want to pause to think about this."

"This needs thinking about."

The pause is not in reaction to anything.The pause is simply the result of your intention to pause. You decide to pause simply because you want to...not because anything has necessarily caught your attention.

The genius of this simple thinking technique is that it forces you to pay attention to something that you would otherwise miss. As de Bono writes in Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas:

"If you do not pay attention to something then you are unlikely to think about it. The creative pause is an interruption in the smooth flow of routine in order to pay deliberate attention at some point." (p87)

The Creative Pause is an antidote to the old saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

But why think about something that "ain't broke"?
If things are going along smoothly, if there isn't any apparent problem, then why take the time and effort to pause and think about an issue that doesn't seem to require it? For example, if your marriage is going well, why take the time to stop and think about it?

The reason is that just because something "ain't broke" doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. You can almost always do something better, if you only take the time to think about it.

And in an ever changing world (e.g. the business world), there simply needs to be what the Japanese call "continuous improvement", else your competitors will get better, while you stay the same. You might not feel the result of that immediately, but sooner or later, as they improve incrementally, it will add up.

When I was a team leader of an engineering repair section in the Air Force, I remember that we had many procedures that had to be followed. Many processes that we needed to do as part of our job. Now most of these processes or procedures worked well. We could have just let the be, and not taken the time to review them, or think about them.

But its when we stopped to think about a process or procedure, we would often notice that we could do it better. More efficiently. With less paperwork. In a simpler way.

Now improving one such "working" procedure on its own might not have made much of a difference, but when we improved a number of such key procedures, we were able to make our work substantially quicker, simpler, and more effective. Which is not a bad thing when you're job is to keep aircraft flying safely.

de Bono writes,

"...some of the best results come when people stop to think about things that no one else has stopped to think about."

Why Creative Pauses take Discipline
Whilst a Creative Pause is simple, it is not necessarily easy.

As we've seen in an earlier post, our brains are trained to automatically respond in a pre-determined way when they receive information. There are patterns of thinking that we just "do", that we just fall into, unless we deliberately choose to pay attention to something.

Unless you pay attention to what colour cars you pass on the road, you're unlikely to notice.

Unless you ask the question as to "why" you do a certain procedure, you're likely to just continue doing it.

And so discipline is called for. You need to make it happen.

Make it happen!
So today, as you are sitting at your desk, carrying out a procedure in a certain way, stop for a moment and say to yourself:

"This is interesting. I noticed that I need this information to write this report.
Hmmm....let me notice what information is required.
I wonder why this is required....let me ponder this..."

If you do this thinking on a regular basis, you are bound to notice things that can be improved.