| name | oblique-strategy |
| description | Use when the user is stuck, needs creative inspiration, asks for an oblique strategy, wants to break through a block, or says things like "I'm stuck", "give me a random idea", "oblique strategy", "help me think differently", or "I need inspiration". |
| version | 0.1.0 |
Oblique Strategies
Share ONE Oblique Strategy from the deck created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. These are lateral thinking prompts designed to break creative deadlocks.
Instructions
- Select ONE strategy randomly from the list below
- Present it simply and clearly
- Optionally offer a brief reflection on how it might apply to the user's current situation
- Do NOT explain or over-analyze - let the strategy speak for itself
The Strategies
Select one at random:
- Honor thy error as a hidden intention
- What would your closest friend do?
- What to increase? What to reduce?
- Are there sections? Consider transitions
- Try faking it!
- Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
- Use an old idea
- State the problem in words as clearly as possible
- Only one element of each kind
- What would your closest friend do?
- What wouldn't you do?
- Courage!
- Go slowly all the way round the outside
- Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do
- Don't be frightened of clichés
- Don't be frightened to display your talents
- Breathe more deeply
- Give way to your worst impulse
- Cascades
- You are an engineer
- Faced with a choice, do both
- Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
- Children's voices -speaking -singing
- Cluster analysis
- Consider different fading systems
- Consult other sources -promising -unpromising
- Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
- Decorate, decorate
- Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor
- Destroy -Loss -Decay
- Discard an axiom
- Disconnect from desire
- Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them
- Distorting time
- Do nothing for as long as possible
- Do something boring
- Do the washing up
- Do the words need changing?
- Don't avoid what is easy
- Don't break the silence
- Don't stress one thing more than another
- Emphasize differences
- Emphasize repetitions
- Emphasize the flaws
- Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation
- Fill every beat with something
- Get your neck massaged
- Ghost echoes
- Give the game away
- Go outside. Shut the door.
- How would you have done it?
- Humanize something free of error
- Idiot glee
- Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar
- Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events
- Infinitesimal gradations
- Intentions -credibility of -Loss of -nobility of
- Into the impossible
- Is it finished?
- Is something missing?
- Is the tuning appropriate?
- Just carry on
- Left channel, right channel, centre channel
- Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
- Listen to the quiet voice
- Look at a very small object, look at its centre
- Look at the order in which you do things
- Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
- Lost in useless territory
- Lowest common denominator check -Loss of interest
- Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
- Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
- Make it more sensual
- Mechanize something idiosyncratic
- Mute and continue
- Not building a wall but making a brick
- Once the search is in progress, something will be found
- Only a part, not the whole
- Overtly resist change
- Pae White's non-blank graphic metacard
- Pay attention to distractions
- Put in earplugs
- Question the heroic approach
- Remember those quiet evenings
- Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
- Remove the middle, extend the edges
- Repetition is a form of change
- Revaluation (a warm feeling)
- Reverse
- Short circuit
- Shut the door and listen from outside
- Simple subtraction
- Simply a matter of work
- Slow preparation, fast execution
- Spectrum analysis
- Take a break
- Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
- Tape your mouth
- The inconsistency principle
- The tape is now the music
- Think of the radio
- Tidy up
- Trust in the you of now
- Turn it upside down
- Twist the spine
- Use 'unqualified' people
- Use fewer notes
- Use filters
- Use your own ideas
- Voice your suspicions
- Water
- What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
- What is the reality of the situation?
- What mistakes did you make last time?
- What would your closest friend do?
- What wouldn't you do?
- Work at a different speed
- Would anybody want it?
- You can only make one dot at a time
- You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
- Your mistake was a hidden intention
- [blank white card]
Presentation Format
Present the strategy like this:
Oblique Strategy:
[The strategy]
If the user seems stuck on a specific problem, you may briefly suggest how the strategy might relate, but keep it minimal. The power is in the user's own interpretation.
