Creative thinking with Free the Genie cards
As I develop more awareness out there, more people are starting to send me copies of their product (books, brainstorming cards, etc.) to try.
Last week, I got a set of Free the Genie cards from Idea Champions in the mail. As they describe it:
Free the Genie is a set of 55 creative thinking cards for open-minded people committed to bringing something new and extraordinary into their lives, their businesses, and the world.
As I went through them, my first thought was, "Well a lot of these are pretty obvious." Then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn't really about giving you some magical perspective you could never have thought of on your own (though there are some good ideas for looking at things differently). It's about taking those possible perspectives and putting them in one place for you to 1) focus on and 2) act on.
The potential of the cards has grown on me. I can see how they would be a great tool for shaking things loose and moving any project you're working on forward.
There are 55 cards in the deck. Here are a couple examples:
Find Another Way
What is the biggest obstacle in the way of manifesting your most inspired idea?
Name three ways you can go over, around, or through this obstacle.
Find Wisdom in the Absurd
Think of one really absurd enhancement to your new idea - then identify at least one good thing about it that intrigues you.
What clues does this give you about proceeding differently?
See What You Can't
Ask three trustworthy people to point out your biggest blind spot as an entrepreneur.
What can you do, in the next 10 days, to shed some light on this blind spot?
There are several that I really like similar to the finding wisdom in the absurd question, where you find the golden nuggets of insight in ideas that you would ordinarily discard out of hand as unrealistic and irrelevant.
All in all, this deck seems like a handy tool for looking at your endeavors with fresh eyes.
[Update: Check out Chuck Frey's review of the Free the Genie deck over on Innovation Tools' website.]
Curt Rosengren
Curt,
I've been having something very similar on my websrt,
Iite for some time now (in therighthand bar). It's a random display of the 'Oblique Strategies, Ed.3 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt', which can be found on http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/Edition1-3.html
I find these kind of 'hints' very effective in a road-block kind of situation!
-Martin
Posted by: Martin Spernau | February 09, 2005 at 05:21 AM
Martin is dead on.
Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created the model for this entire product category and they should be given honorary royalties every time someone "re-invents" the Oblique Strategies.
Posted by: Ray Schraff | February 10, 2005 at 07:06 AM