Combine Two Disconnected Ideas – Battling Bloggers Block

This is part 5 in the Battling Bloggers Block Series

5. Combine Two Disconnected Ideas

Regular readers will know that I like a Tangent – I love to take everyday situations, ideas and experiences that have no relation to blogging and find ways to combine make them illustrate a point.

Some of the best inventions and scientific discoveries come out of this type of thinking – bringing together two ideas that have not previously been connected to form something new and fresh.

Of course this type of thinking doesn’t just happen – it takes practice to be able to see the world this way.

Edward De Bono has many creative thinking techniques that help people develop this type of thinking. I’m not completely sure which of his books I read it in – but I seem to remember him suggesting free thinking brainstorming around a question like:

‘Think of as many uses as possible for a fork’

The challenge was to come up with as many answers as possible (no answer was too silly) in a short period of time. The answers are useless (unless you’re in the cutlery manufacturing business) but the thinking processes are valuable as you begin to learn the power of creative thinking and thinking outside the box when it comes to everyday objects.

This is the type of thinking that was behind some of my older entries on blogging like a goose, talking about blogging and parenting, blogging and marriage, starting the Blogger Idol meme, and blogging and Travelator users and their techniques (among others). Now it might just have been me who enjoyed the challenge of writing these posts – but I found them fun ways to talk about things I’d talked about many times before – with a twist.