“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” –Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize Winner)

Our brains love questions. They have the power to engage us and to shift our mindsets. They drive knowledge and growth, and fuel both creativity and critical thinking. Here are 10 ways to ask questions more intelligently you can start using today.

1. Questions for Creative Problem Solving

One of the most effective ways to approach any problem is to ask questions about it. The greatest thing about questions is that your brain automatically starts working on them as soon as you ask them. Not only that, but it’ll keep working on them in the background, when you’re not even aware of it.

For an initial set of more than 50 sample questions you can use in just about any problem, try the SCAMPER technique. Another effective technique you can use is asking why until you get to the core of your problem.

2. Questions for Shifting Your Perspective to a Problem

Just like it’s useful asking questions about a problem, so it is turning the problem itself into a question. We know that properly defining and stating problems is essential for great problem solving, and framing problems as questions is one of the techniques that can definitely boost your effectiveness as problem-solver.

In general, statements trigger our brains’ logical and analytical skills. Many times, they encourage you to try and reach conclusions as soon as possible. Questions, on the other hand, trigger our brains’ imagination and creative thinking skills. They encourage you to take a more exploratory approach, which tends to foster a whole new set of insights.

For example, try changing a problem statement such as “Ways to Improve My Life” into questions such as “In what ways can I improve my life?”, or “Is there an opportunity for improving my life here?”, and check how it feels.

3. Questions for Directing Thinking and Debate

Questions guide and direct our thinking process. Depending on the situation, it might be more useful to ask “open”, or “expanding” questions: they elicit new ideas, opinions and grow possibilities. Examples include “What are your thoughts on this idea?”, and “Can you think of other usage scenarios?”.

On the other hand, sometimes it might be more productive to ask “closed” or “narrowing down” questions: they converge focus, direct thinking, and bring discussions to a more objective, “down-to-earth” level. Examples include: “What are the tasks that need to get done?”, “How much will this cost?”.

The idea is to purposefully use different kinds of questions at different times to consciously drive your thinking process towards the most productive direction.

4. Questions for Education and Leadership

Great teachers and coaches know that true learning can only happen when students think by themselves. Questions are a great way to stimulate thinking — and, if used skillfully, work vastly better than just dumping knowledge into someone’s head.

Instead of simply showing concepts and solutions to students, teachers can use questions to instigate collaborative exploration: ” What would happen if we increased the angle here?”, “How would it behave without air resistance?” and so on.

Also, questions work not only for teachers, but can be extremely useful in business environments. In corporations, for example, leaders (formal or not) can, by asking questions and guiding people to think for themselves, encourage shared pride and ownership of the solutions generated. Typical questions include “What solutions can we see here?” and “What do you think we should do?”.

5. Questions for Creating Conversation and Empathy

Questions are the glue of empathetic communication: they energize and enliven conversations, inviting people to participate and to share insights and opinions. When you use them properly, people feel included and listened to and, therefore, will be much more likely to engage in meaningful and productive conversation.

Lately, I started noticing that many discussions are, in fact, more like simultaneous monologues: instead of listening, each person is just waiting his turn to talk. Simple queries such as “How can I help?”, or “Did your son get better since last time we talked?” are the easiest way to show that you’re listening, and that you honestly care about what’s being shared with you.

6. Questions for Critical Thinking

Skillful use of inquiry is the cornerstone of critical thinking. Again, it’s only through questioning that we can truly think by ourselves — instead of blindly accepting whatever we’re told as the right thing to do or the only acceptable answer.

When I say ’skillful use of inquiry’, this does not mean necessarily getting fancy: oftentimes, it means being playful and “thinking like a child”. Great critical thinkers don’t get embarrassed to ask seemingly naïve questions: these are usually the most effective — as well as the ones snob intellectuals are more prone to overlook.

As an effective initial set of questions to use, it’s hard to beat the famous 5Ws (what, where, who, when and why). “Where did you see it?”, “What are the causes of it?”, “Why is the emperor naked?”.

7. Questions for Shifting Your Focus

Reframing self-limiting situations as questions has long been celebrated as an excellent way to instantly changing the way we feel.

Suppose you’re feeling down but, even so, you dare to ask yourself “What am I excited about?”. At first, you’ll get irritated by the question. However, if you put honest effort in answering it, you will indeed find something worth feeling better about. And that’s not denial: it’s just shifting your focus.

Also, disempowering statements such as “This is impossible!” increase your stress and prevent you from searching for solutions. Turn it into “How can I make this possible?” or ” What’s good about this?” puts you back in the driver’s seat and direct your focus on solutions.

8. Questions for Inspiration, Goal Setting and Action

A great way to set goals is by asking yourself “What if…?”. This question alone has the power to direct our imagination to create a vision for ourselves — and then spawn the thought processes that help it become reality.

A technique I use to think about “higher-levels” goals — as well as roles and areas of responsibility — is to turn them into questions. Statements may work fine for to-do lists, but I find that for thinking about the big picture they’re overly dull and uninspiring.

For example, suppose that you identified ‘Health’ as a general area that is important to you. Now, one way to track and assess progress under that area is to think generically about this label “Health” and what actions you can take. Contrast it with the much stronger alternative of turning it into a question: “How can I improve my health today?”.

Thinking that way motivates and primes you for action. In fact, it’s so strong that it’s hard not to take action, don’t you agree? The same holds true for goals and even lower-level projects: the goal “Get 10 new customers by the end of the week” may be what some call a SMART goal, but “What can I do now to get a new customer?” is the one that motivates action the most.

9. Questions for Self-Reflection

As powerful thinking tools that they are, questions can help you examine your life and help you get in touch with your inner self. They work very well with standard self-reflection techniques, such as many forms of journaling.

A great exercise is to create a list of 100 consisting only of questions — the questions that matter the most to you at the moment (these can range from “Where did I left my keys?” to “What’s my life mission?”). From that list, narrow it down to ten or twenty items, creating your own List of Great Questions, which you can revisit often to reconnect with the pursuits that really matter to you.

An extension of that technique you may want to try is taking each of those questions and journaling about them, devoting a journal entry for each question, just like in the Topics du Jour technique. This gives you the opportunity to focus your attention on each question at regular intervals.

10. Questioning as a Way of Life

Developing the habit of questioning is perhaps the greatest hallmark of highly-developed minds. I believe that questioning is the ultimate tool to stimulate thinking and, as such, it’s hard to dispute the usefulness and importance of cultivating this habit.

But how do we develop the habit of questioning? The answer, just like everything else in life, is practice, practice, practice. Always carry a notebook with you and keep writing questions down as they come to you.

Question everything. Become comfortable with unanswered questions. Don’t see them as problems, or as a necessary evil in your way to answers. Welcome them. Play with them. Your brain will thank you.

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• Tackle Any Issue With a List of 100
• Solve Your Problems Simply by Saying Them Out Loud
• Put Yourself in Any Mental State With a Mental Sanctuary
• How to Learn (Almost) Anything
• How to Become an Expert: A Roadmap
• Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving (and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)
• Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER
• Brainwriting is Brainstorming on Steroids
• Boost Your Brainstorm Effectiveness with the Why Habit

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Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.

This quote does illustrate an important point: before jumping right into solving a problem, we should step back and invest time and effort to improve our understanding of it. Here are 10 strategies you can use to see problems from many different perspectives and master what is the most important step in problem solving: clearly defining the problem in the first place!

The Problem Is To Know What the Problem Is

The definition of the problem will be the focal point of all your problem-solving efforts. As such, it makes sense to devote as much attention and dedication to problem definition as possible. What usually happens is that as soon as we have a problem to work on we’re so eager to get to solutions that we neglect spending any time refining it.

What most of us don’t realize — and what supposedly Einstein might have been alluding to — is that the quality of the solutions we come up with will be in direct proportion to the quality of the description of the problem we’re trying to solve. Not only will your solutions be more abundant and of higher quality, but they’ll be achieved much, much more easily. Most importantly, you’ll have the confidence to be tackling a worthwhile problem.

Problem Definition Tools and Strategies

The good news is that getting different perspectives and angles in order to clearly define a problem is a skill that can be learned and developed. As such, there are many strategies you can use to perfect it. Here are the 10 most effective ones I know.

1. Rephrase the Problem

When a Toyota executive asked employees to brainstorm “ways to increase their productivity”, all he got back were blank stares. When he rephrased his request as “ways to make their jobs easier”, he could barely keep up with the amount of suggestions.

Words carry strong implicit meaning and, as such, play a major role in how we perceive a problem. In the example above, ‘be productive’ might seem like a sacrifice you’re doing for the company, while ‘make your job easier’ may be more like something you’re doing for your own benefit, but from which the company also benefits. In the end, the problem is still the same, but the feelings — and the points of view — associated with each of them are vastly different.

Play freely with the problem statement, rewording it several times. For a methodic approach, take single words and substitute variations. ‘Increase sales’? Try replacing ‘increase’ with ‘attract’, ‘develop’, ‘extend’, ‘repeat’ and see how your perception of the problem changes. A rich vocabulary plays an important role here, so you may want to use a thesaurus or develop your vocabulary.

2. Expose and Challenge Assumptions

Every problem — no matter how apparently simple it may be — comes with a long list of assumptions attached. Many of these assumptions may be inaccurate and could make your problem statement inadequate or even misguided.

The first step to get rid of bad assumptions is to make them explicit. Write a list and expose as many assumptions as you can — especially those that may seem the most obvious and ‘untouchable’.

That, in itself, brings more clarity to the problem at hand. But go further and test each assumption for validity: think in ways that they might not be valid and their consequences. What you will find may surprise you: that many of those bad assumptions are self-imposed — with just a bit of scrutiny you are able to safely drop them.

For example, suppose you’re about to enter the restaurant business. One of your assumptions might be ‘restaurants have a menu’. While such an assumption may seem true at first, try challenging it and maybe you’ll find some very interesting business models (such as one restaurant in which customers bring dish ideas for the chef to cook, for example).

3. Chunk Up

Each problem is a small piece of a greater problem. In the same way that you can explore a problem laterally — such as by playing with words or challenging assumptions — you can also explore it at different “altitudes”.

If you feel you’re overwhelmed with details or looking at a problem too narrowly, look at it from a more general perspective. In order to make your problem more general, ask questions such as: “What’s this a part of?”, “What’s this an example of?” or “What’s the intention behind this?”.

For a detailed explanation of how this principle works, check the article Boost Your Brainstorm Effectiveness with the Why Habit.

Another approach that helps a lot in getting a more general view of a problem is replacing words in the problem statement with hypernyms. Hypernyms are words that have a broader meaning than the given word. (For example, a hypernym of ‘car’ is ‘vehicle’). A great, free tool for finding hypernyms for a given word is WordNet (just search for a word and click on the ‘S:’ label before the word definitions).

4. Chunk Down

If each problem is part of a greater problem, it also means that each problem is composed of many smaller problems. It turns out that decomposing a problem in many smaller problems — each of them more specific than the original — can also provide greater insights about it.

‘Chunking the problem down’ (making it more specific) is especially useful if you find the problem overwhelming or daunting.

Some of the typical questions you can ask to make a problem more specific are: “What are parts of this?” or “What are examples of this?”.

Just as in ‘chunking up’, word substitution can also come to great use here. The class of words that are useful here are hyponyms: words that are stricter in meaning than the given one. (E.g. two hyponyms of ‘car’ are ‘minivan’ and ‘limousine’). WordNet can also help you finding hyponyms.

5. Find Multiple Perspectives

Before rushing to solve a problem, always make sure you look at it from different perspectives. Looking at it with different eyes is a great way to have instant insight on new, overlooked directions.

For example, if you own a business and are trying to ‘increase sales’, try to view this problem from the point of view of, say, a customer. For example, from the customer’s viewpoint, this may be a matter of adding features to your product that one would be willing to pay more for.

Rewrite your problem statement many times, each time using one of these different perspectives. How would your competition see this problem? Your employees? Your mom?

Also, imagine how people in various roles would frame the problem. How would a politician see it? A college professor? A nun? Try to find the differences and similarities on how the different roles would deal with your problem.

6. Use Effective Language Constructs

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for properly crafting the perfect problem statement, but there are some language constructs that always help making it more effective:

• Assume a myriad of solutions. An excellent way to start a problem statement is: “In what ways might I…”. This expression is much superior to “How can I…” as it hints that there’s a multitude of solutions, and not just one — or maybe none. As simple as this sounds, the feeling of expectancy helps your brain find solutions.
• Make it positive. Negative sentences require a lot more cognitive power to process and may slow you down — or even derail your train of thought. Positive statements also help you find the real goal behind the problem and, as such, are much more motivating.
  For example: instead of finding ways to ‘quit smoking’, you may find that ‘increase your energy’, ‘live longer’ and others are much more worthwhile goals.
• Frame your problem in the form of a question. Our brain loves questions. If the question is powerful and engaging, our brains will do everything within their reach to answer it. We just can’t help it: Our brains will start working on the problem immediately and keep working in the background, even when we’re not aware of it.
• If you’re still stuck, consider using the following formula for phrasing your problem statement:
  “In what ways (action) (object) (qualifier) (end result)?”
  Example: In what ways might I package (action) my book (object) more attractively (qualifier) so people will buy more of it (end result)?

7. Make It Engaging

In addition to using effective language constructs, it’s important to come up with a problem statement that truly excites you so you’re in the best frame of mind for creatively tackling the problem. If the problem looks too dull for you, invest the time adding vigor to it while still keeping it genuine. Make it enticing. Your brain will thank (and reward) you later.

One thing is to ‘increase sales’ (boring), another one is ‘wow your customers’. One thing is ‘to create a personal development blog’, another completely different is to ‘empower readers to live fully’.

8. Reverse the Problem

One trick that usually helps when you’re stuck with a problem is turning it on its head.

If you want to win, find out what would make you lose. If you are struggling finding ways to ‘increase sales’, find ways to decrease them instead. Then, all you need to do is reverse your answers. ‘Make more sales calls’ may seem an evident way of increasing sales, but sometimes we only see these ‘obvious’ answers when we look at the problem from an opposite direction.

This seemingly convoluted method may not seem intuitive at first, but turning a problem on its head can uncover rather obvious solutions to the original problem.

9. Gather Facts

Investigate causes and circumstances of the problem. Probe details about it — such as its origins and causes. Especially if you have a problem that’s too vague, investigating facts is usually more productive than trying to solve it right away.

If, for example, the problem stated by your spouse is “You never listen to me”, the solution is not obvious. However, if the statement is “You don’t make enough eye contact when I’m talking to you,” then the solution is obvious and you can skip brainstorming altogether. (You’ll still need to work on the implementation, though!)

Ask yourself questions about the problem. What is not known about it? Can you draw a diagram of the problem? What are the problem boundaries? Be curious. Ask questions and gather facts. It is said that a well-defined problem is halfway to being solved: I would add that a perfectly-defined problem is not a problem anymore.

10. Problem-Solve Your Problem Statement

I know I risk getting into an infinite loop here, but as you may have noticed, getting the right perspective of a problem is, well, a problem in itself. As such, feel free to use any creative thinking technique you know to help. There are plenty to choose from:

You may want to give yourself an Idea Quota of problem statements. Or write a List of 100 problems to solve. SCAMPER your problem definition. These are just some of dozen techniques you can try.

Of course, how much effort you invest in defining the problem in contrast to how much effort you invest in solving your actual problem is a hard balance to achieve, though one which is attainable with practice.

Personally, I don’t think that 55 minutes of defining a problem versus 5 minutes acting on it is usually a good proportion. The point is that we must be aware of how important problem defining is and correct our tendency to spend too little time on it.

In fact, when you start paying more attention to how you define your problems, you’ll probably find that it is usually much harder than solving them. But you’ll also find that the payoff is well worth the effort.

References:

• Einstein’s Portrait: Yousuf Karsh.
• Einstein’s Quote: Cracking Creativity.

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• Boost Your Brainstorm Effectiveness with the Why Habit
• Topics du Jour: Give Your Life Direction in Less than 10 Minutes a Day
• The Medici Effect
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Wherever you ask, when it comes to group problem-solving, brainstorming is always the default tool of choice. Brainstorming certainly gets all the fame and glory, but is it the most effective tool for groups to generate ideas? Not necessarily.

Traditional brainstorming pales in comparison with a technique called Brainwriting. Brainwriting can easily lead to more than double the ideas generated in a typical brainstorming session. Also, it’s not as tricky as brainstorming to work well for you.

The Shortcomings of Brainstorming

Brainstorming is by far the most widely used group idea generation tool. We all know the drill: get together in a room and let the ideas run wild while building on each other’s ideas.

One of the reasons brainstorming is so popular is because of the widespread notion that grouping people together is always more effective than letting participants work in isolation. On a first look that makes sense, but is it really so?

That’s not what some recent research shows. Several studies (notably Diehl and Strobe’s, from 1987 to 1994) tested brainstorming teams extensively and realized that participants working in isolation consistently outperformed participants working in groups, both in quantity and quality of ideas generated.

The fact is that brainstorming, the way it’s carried out, has some fundamental shortcomings that are hard to overcome. Here are the top 3 reasons why brainstorming usually isn’t as effective as you might think:

1. “Blocking”

This is by far the number one deficiency in traditional brainstorming: only one person can speak at a time.

The problem with that lies in the fact that our short-term memory can’t effectively develop new ideas while keeping old ones in active storage. If we can’t announce our ideas because we have to wait for someone else to describe theirs, we will end up judging or editing them — or even forgetting them altogether.

Not surprisingly, this makes all the difference in our idea output. Even when we do get a chance to describe an idea, we may get to offer only one or two comments before someone else breaks in.

The larger the brainstorming group, the bigger the amount of “blocked” participants, and the fewer the ideas produced compared to an equal number of people generating ideas independently.

2. Evaluation Apprehension

This relates to the fact that some group members avoid expressing what they consider to be wild ideas based on how the other members will privately judge them.

“Suspend judgment!”, “Be wild and outrageous!”, “Speak with no fear!”: this is advice that is hard to take when you’re in company of an authority figure, such as the guy who gets to decide how small your annual bonus will be.

Despite the soundness of the advice to let ideas run wild, the truth is that many groups are not mature or prepared enough to follow it. “Maybe my idea” — they think — “will be seen as way off the mark, so why take any chances?”

3. Personality Face Off

Brainstorming sessions can easily become an arena of clashing human personalities. True, diversity is a necessary part of effective brainstorming, but it also makes fertile ground for all sorts of unproductive behavior.

Examples? Overpowering people trying to dominate the session. Passive people speaking the minimum possible to get by unnoticed. Stubborn people getting overprotective about their ideas and not accepting others’. Fearful people being reticent and evasive, and only presenting safe ideas. The list goes on and on.

The bottom line is that personality differences, if not dealt appropriately, can harm more than help problem solving.

Enter Brainwriting

If brainstorming groups are usually outperformed by individuals working alone, should we quit forming brainstorming groups then? Or is there a way to brainstorm together while sidestepping those fundamental shortcomings? Time to meet the Brainwriting technique.

As in traditional brainstorming, in Brainwriting everyone sits at a table together to simultaneously tackle a problem. The difference is that in Brainwriting each participant thinks and records ideas individually, without any verbal interaction. As we’ll see, this small change results in a fundamental difference in the idea generation effectiveness.

Here are the steps in a typical Brainwriting session:

1. Participants sit around a table and each one gets a sheet of paper with the same problem statement written at the top. Just like in traditional brainstorming, you also need a moderator for the session.
2. At the moderator’s signal, each participant has 3 minutes to write down 3 ideas on the sheet of paper. Just like in traditional brainstorming, the ideas should always go unedited. The difference is that now they are being recorded in private. The number of ideas and duration can vary, but I found that “three ideas every three minutes” works particularly well.
3. When time is up (or when everybody’s done), each participant passes the sheet of paper to the participant to the left.
4. Each participant now reads the ideas that were previously written and a new three-minute round starts. Each participant must again come up with three new ideas. Participants are free to use the ideas already on the sheet as triggers — or to ignore them altogether.
5. Lather, rinse, repeat. The group can agree to stop after a fixed number of rounds (such as when sheets come to a full turn around the table) or when participants feel that contributions are exhausted.
6. After the idea-gathering phase is completed, the ideas are read, discussed and consolidated with the help of the moderator, just like in traditional brainstorming.

So, what does this small change of having the ideas written, instead of spoken accomplish?

• The amount of ideas generated can be amazing. Since ideas are generated simultaneously, participants never get to block each other. With everyone generating 3 ideas every 3 minutes, a group of 5 people is able to produce 100 ideas in 20 minutes.
• Participants still get to cross-pollinate and build on each other’s ideas. That is, they still get the benefits of brainstorming in a group, while avoiding its main shortcomings.
• Ideas are recorded the moment you get them: no ideas are lost while you wait for a chance to speak.
• No one gets overshadowed and everybody contributes equally, regardless of personality type or personal agenda.
• Ideas are contributed in private. In less mature environments, there’s no fear of being openly judged by other participants. The ideas can be kept anonymous and participants have freedom to be truly wild with their ideas.
• Everyone’s given a clear task: to fulfill a specific idea quota in a specific time frame. The quota adds an element of healthy pressure that can help unlock your creativity, as it can be seen as a fun challenge.

Closing Thoughts

To be fair, there are ways to make traditional brainstorming work better (that may be the theme for a future article). However, using Brainwriting is always my preferred choice, as it often generates many more ideas and it’s way easier to get it right.

Here are some additional recommended resources on Brainwriting:

1. Mycoted Brainwriting Page: The Mycoted wiki is an amazing online resource of creativity techniques (make sure to check their index page). The Brainwriting page has several interesting variations of the technique. Highly recommended.
2. Michael Michalko’s book Cracking Creativity. An impressive resource. It has a great wealth of thinking and creativity techniques, including Brainwriting. Michalko’s book always tops my recommendations of books on creativity.
3. MindMeister online mind mapping tool. MindMeister is the best tool I found so far for web-based, real-time, collaborative mind mapping. Even though it wasn’t specifically designed to support Brainwriting, it works very well for that purpose.

Also, to make sure you don’t miss complementary content, such as templates for Brainwriting and idea-generation in general, sign up for the free Litemind Newsletter.

Over to you now: share your experiences with brainstorming and Brainwriting. Have you ever faced the problems I described with brainstorming? Have you tried Brainwriting? If you have any experience with specific online thinking tools (designed for Brainwriting or not), sharing your experiences here would be invaluable. Thanks!

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SCAMPER is a technique you can use to spark your creativity and help you overcome any challenge you may be facing. In essence, SCAMPER is a general-purpose checklist with idea-spurring questions — which is both easy to use and surprisingly powerful.

In this posting, I present a complete SCAMPER primer, along with two free creativity-boosting resources: a downloadable reference mind map and an online tool that generates random questions to get you out of a rut whenever you need.

SCAMPER Primer

SCAMPER is based on the notion that everything new is a modification of something that already exists. Each letter in the acronym represents a different way you can play with the characteristics of what is challenging you to trigger new ideas:

• S = Substitute
• C = Combine
• A = Adapt
• M = Magnify
• P = Put to Other Uses
• E = Eliminate (or Minify)
• R = Rearrange (or Reverse)

To use the SCAMPER technique, first state the problem you’d like to solve or the idea you’d like to develop. It can be anything: a challenge in your personal life or business; or maybe a product, service or process you want to improve. After pinpointing the challenge, it’s then a matter of asking questions about it using the SCAMPER checklist to guide you.

Consider, for instance, the problem "How can I increase sales in my business?"

Following the SCAMPER recipe, here are a few questions you could ask:

• S (Substitute): "What can I substitute in my selling process?"
• C (Combine): "How can I combine selling with other activities?"
• A (Adapt): "What can I adapt or copy from someone else’s selling process?"
• M (Magnify): "What can I magnify or put more emphasis on when selling?"
• P (Put to Other Uses): "How can I put my selling to other uses?"
• E (Eliminate): "What can I eliminate or simplify in my selling process?"
• R (Rearrange): "How can I change, reorder or reverse the way I sell?"

These questions force you to think differently about your problem and eventually come up with innovative solutions.

A classic example is MacDonald’s founder Ray Kroc. In hindsight, it’s easy to identify many of the ideas he used through the SCAMPER lens: selling restaurants and real estate instead of simply hamburgers [P = Put to other uses]; having customers pay before they eat [R=Rearrange]; letting customers serve themselves, avoiding the use of waiters [E=Eliminate] — just to mention a few.

SCAMPER Reference

You will find below a comprehensive help guide to using SCAMPER. There are more than 60 questions that can be asked, along with almost 200 words and expressions you can create associations with.

(icons by Everaldo Coelho)

SCAMPER Resources

1. SCAMPER Random Question Tool

There are many ways to use SCAMPER. For example, you can sequentially go through all the questions in the previous section as fast as you can; or you can stay on each question until you think you exhausted all possibilities.

However, when it comes to creativity, getting random — and unexpected — input can really help your mind find a solution for that ‘impossible’ problem. With that in mind, as a companion to this article, I created the SCAMPER Random Question Tool: it shows you an unexpected question drawn from all the SCAMPER questions in the previous section. Think about a problem that has been nagging you then give the tool a try to see how many options you can generate.

• SCAMPER Random Question Tool

2. SCAMPER Reference Mind Map

I’ve put together all the SCAMPER questions from the previous sections in a mind map, formatted for a single printed page. Think of it as a handy one-page reference you can use whenever you are stuck or just need a kick start to get your creative juices flowing.

• SCAMPER Reference Mind Map [.pdf, 646 KB]

3. Thinkertoys Book

The best resource I know about SCAMPER is Michael Michalko’s wonderful book Thinkertoys: it has more than 40 pages dedicated to SCAMPER alone. Michael’s book is the most comprehensive creativity reference I have put my hands on: there are more than 40 creativity techniques that should suit every taste — from the most logic to the most intuitive types. Highly recommended!

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

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If you’re stuck trying to find ways to achieve a goal or solve a problem, there’s a quick analysis tool that can put you back in perspective and save you hours of frustrated brainstorming. It’s as effective as it’s simple: all it takes is asking ‘why’…

Finding Your Motivation

Behind every goal you set or every problem you’re working on there’s a motivation. Even though the reasons we’re doing something are usually clear, next time you’re brainstorming solutions for a challenge you’re facing, take a few seconds and deliberately ask yourself:

“Why do I want this?”

Knowing your motivation is the most fundamental step before taking any action; after all, if you don’t know the reason for doing something, why do it in the first place? While this may seem blatantly obvious, the truth is that we often don’t consciously clarify the reasons for our actions beforehand.

Suppose you have the goal “Get more customers to my business”:

—“Why do I want to get more customers to my business?”
—”To increase sales” you may say.

Don’t try to be particularly clever about your answer: just give the first and most evident reason. While you may regard “to increase sales” as the most obvious of the possible answers, consciously bringing it to light accomplishes a lot: it gives you a fresh new perspective about your challenge.

That simple answer gives you an entire new dimension of brainstorming possibilities: if what you really want to accomplish is increasing sales, you don’t necessarily need to get more customers — What about making bigger sales each time? What about making your customers return more often?

Focusing too narrowly on a goal or problem without understanding your underlying motivations prevents you from coming up with many creative and effective solutions.

Motivation Comes in Layers

You can extract full benefit from this technique by realizing that your motivations are layered: each motivation is a way to fulfill a higher-level one. To find out upper levels of motivation, all you need is to keep asking ‘why’. In our example, the exercise could unfold like this:

—”Why do I want to get more customers to my business?”
—”To increase sales.”

—”Why do I want to increase sales?”
—”To expand my profits.”

—”Why do I want to increase my profits?”
—”To retire earlier.”

—”Why do I want to retire earlier?”
—”To spend more time with my family.”

Working the motivation ladder in this manner is a great way to find the perspective you’re more comfortable working with. You may be paralyzed about “getting more customers”, but brainstorming ways to “spend more time with family” may be much more appealing to you.

The trick is to find the motivation layer that resonates better with you and then work from there. When you purposefully think in terms of motivations, problems become multidimensional: you can always choose more effective approaches to get unstuck immediately.

More surprisingly, each level of motivation can bring you new insights that may drastically change the direction you approach your goal. In the example above, consider the high-level motivation “to spend more time with my family”: blindly tackling your lower-level motivation of “getting more customers to my business” may force you to spend even more hours at the office — which is the exact opposite of what you really want, isn’t it?

5 Main Benefits of Asking Why

There are many more reasons why considering your motivations can make all the difference in a brainstorming session. Here are just a few:

1. Multiplying your Creative Output

If you were stuck with only one goal to go after, now you have many more to choose from: that means that if you could accomplish it in a hundred different ways, now you can do it in five hundred ways or even more.

2. Bringing a Sense of Purpose

Even if you end up choosing the original challenge you had at hand, you’ll now work on it with a clearer purpose in your mind. This may give you just that extra enthusiasm boost that you need.

3. Spotting Misalignments

Just like in the example of discovering that ‘getting more customers’ really meant ’spending more time with family’, you may find that a lower-level goal is misaligned or conflicting with a higher-level motivation. In this case, simply drop your lower-level goal and approach your objective from a higher-level one instead.

4. Finding broader solutions

Brainstorming at higher levels of abstraction can give you solutions that encompass multiple areas of your life and address many issues in a single blow.

5. Uncovering Personal Values and Mission

If you keep climbing the ‘why ladder’ as high as you can, you’ll notice that soon enough you’ll inescapably uncover your core personal values — and ultimately your life mission. This is an extremely simple and practical “bottom-up” approach to understanding what really matters to you.

It’s a Habit

We’re so used to just spitting out solutions to problems that, more often than not, we just get into auto-pilot mode — forgetting to connect with our underlying motivations. But asking ‘why’ is nothing more than a habit. In fact, it’s so simple and effective that all you need to do is to just get started.

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The List of 100 is a powerful technique you can use to generate ideas, clarify your thoughts, uncover hidden problems or get solutions to any specific questions you’re interested in.

The technique is very simple in principle: state your issue or question in the top of a blank sheet of paper and come up with a list of one hundred answers or solutions about it. “100 Ways to Generate Income”, “100 Ways to be More Creative” or “100 Ways to Improve my Relationships” are some examples.

“One hundred entries? Isn’t that way too many?”

Bear with me: it’s exactly this exaggeration that makes the technique powerful.

When starting your list you may believe that there’s no way to get it done. But then, at some point during the exercise, you will naturally have your subconscious mind naturally engaged in the process. That’s when you will uncover many new and surprising answers, and ideas will start flowing again. Making a List of 100 is a beautifully articulated cooperation between the conscious and subconscious minds tackling one single problem.

Unlike the related Idea Quota tool — whose primary goal is to acquire the habit of coming up with ideas — the goal of a List of 100 is to take your mind by surprise. While both techniques are based on the concept of getting good ideas from lots of ideas, the ideas generated by each method are usually different in kind. With the Idea Quota you tend to have more elaborate ideas, because you have time to incubate them throughout the day (often without being aware of it). With a List of 100 you tend to get more unexpected ideas, because you catch your subconscious off guard, not giving it any time for its behind-the-scenes editing.

Ground Rules

There are only two simple principles to keep in mind when making Lists of 100:

1. Do it at one sitting

This is the one crucial element for the technique to work. If you end up doing your hundred entries, though over many sessions, you’ll defeat the point of the technique. Before starting your list, make yourself comfortable and try to block all potential interruptions.

2. Eliminate distractions

Just like most brainstorming techniques, you should strive to eliminate all activities unrelated to idea generation during the brainstorming session. Just focus on getting the ideas out of your head as quickly as possible following these rules:

• Don’t judge or evaluate ideas; you’ll review them later.
• Don’t write complete words or sentences if that slows you down.
• Don’t stop to wonder how far in the list you are; number the lines from 1 to 100 in advance or use numbered lists if you’re using a word processor.
• Don’t worry too much about repeating entries; duplicates can shed light on your patterns of thought.

The Dynamics of Making Lists of 100

To understand why creating a List of 100 works, consider what happens during the process of making one. There are three distinct phases you will usually go through when making your list:

1. First 30 entries or so: where you escape circular thinking

The first items are the easiest to come up with. In this first phase, your conscious mind is still in charge and you’ll most probably just dump ideas you’re already familiar with.

2. Next 40 entries: where patterns emerge

In this phase you’ll start noticing recurring themes and patterns of thought. Phase two is usually the hardest one, as you may find it difficult to let go of the ideas you had in the first phase in order to come up with new, distinct ones.

Bear in mind that it’s exactly this struggle that enables you to get to the third and most fruitful phase, hence the importance of not giving up at this point.

3. Last 30 entries: where the gems are

At this point you will already have exhausted most “logical” answers, allowing your subconscious mind to express itself more freely. Don’t be surprised if you get at least one or two really nonsensical or seemingly illogical entries. You may feel tempted to not write them down (”How on earth did I think that?”). Write them down anyway: these wacky entries may sound far from profound, but it’s exactly those items you’re after.

Also, after coming up with so many entries, it’s not rare to experience a shift in perspective: items that you first felt as being awkward will seem to better fit now than when you started the list. Moreover, your whole attitude towards the problem can change as you develop your entries: you may even come to the conclusion that you should be dealing with a different list topic altogether.

Applications of Lists of 100

Although I have known a variation of the List of 100 technique for several years (thanks to Michael Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci), it was only recently that I realized the technique’s full potential by reading Kathleen Adams’s Journal to the Self: 22 Paths to Personal Growth. This is an excellent book that has many great journaling techniques — and the List of 100 has its own chapter.

The List of 100 technique can be used for a lot more than solving specific problems; it is a general-purpose personal development tool that can help increase your self-knowledge, motivate yourself, and much more. To illustrate its myriad of uses, find below a List of 100 Lists of 100. The list was mostly taken from Journal to the Self, and slightly adapted with some of my own ideas.

100 Things to Write a List of 100 About

1. 100 Things I’m Grateful For
2. 100 Ways I Could Nurture Myself
3. 100 Ways I Sabotage Myself
4. 100 Things I’m Good At
5. 100 Things I Like About Myself
6. 100 Questions I Want Answers
7. 100 Ways To Improve My Life
8. 100 Things I’ve Accomplished In My Life
9. 100 Things I’m Feeling Stressed About
10. 100 Things I’d Do If I Had Time
11. 100 Things I Need Or Want To Do
12. 100 Things I Want To Accomplish In The Next X Months
13. 100 Things To Do Before I Die
14. 100 Things That Are Going Right
15. 100 Things That Are Going Wrong
16. 100 Reasons I Want To Stay Married/Committed
17. 100 Reasons I Don’t Want To Stay Married/Committed
18. 100 Things I Want In A Partner/Relationship
19. 100 Things I Have To Offer To A Partner/Relationship
20. 100 Fears I Am Having Right Now
21. 100 Things That Once Scared Me But Don’t Anymore
22. 100 Reasons To Save Money
23. 100 Things I Miss
24. 100 Sacrifices I Have Made
25. 100 Marketing Ideas For My Business
26. 100 Ways I Can Make Money
27. 100 Ways To Make A Difference
28. 100 Jobs/Careers I’d Like To Have
29. 100 Fears About Being A Multimillionaire
30. 100 Things I Believe In
31. 100 Achievements (Qualities) I Am Proud Of
32. 100 Things I Value In Life
33. 100 Ways I Help Others
34. 100 Things That Turn Me On
35. 100 Things That Turn Me Off
36. 100 Judgments I Make
37. 100 Things I Find Hard To Share
38. 100 Things I’m Disappointed About
39. 100 Things I’m Angry About
40. 100 Things I’m Sad About
41. 100 Things [Peoples, Places] I Love
42. 100 Things To Do When I’m Depressed
43. 100 Things To Do When I’m Alone
44. 100 Rules I Have Broken
45. 100 Skills I Have
46. 100 Feelings I Am Having Right Now
47. 100 Childhood Memories
48. 100 Things My Parents Used To Say To Me
49. 100 Ways In Which I’m Generous
50. 100 Ways To Be More Productive
51. 100 Things I Hate
52. 100 Things I Want
53. 100 Places I’d Like To Visit
54. 100 Things I’d Like Someone To Tell Me
55. 100 Things I’d Like To Hear
56. 100 Things I’d Like To Tell My Child
57. 100 Things I Want My Child To Know About Me
58. 100 Reasons To Have A Baby
59. 100 Reasons Not To Have A Baby
60. 100 Adjectives Describing Myself
61. 100 Decisions Other Have Made For Me
62. 100 Decisions I Made That Turned Out Well
63. 100 Things I’d Do If I Had Six Months To Live
64. 100 Expectations Other Have Of Me
65. 100 Expectations I Have Of Myself
66. 100 Judgments I Haven’t Released
67. 100 Ways To Be More Creative
68. 100 Things I Could Carry In My Pocket
69. 100 Things I’d Save If My House Were On Fire
70. 100 Things I Want To Tell My Mother [Father]
71. 100 Things I’d Never Tell My Mother [Father]
72. 100 Financial Fears
73. 100 Excuses I Make For Myself
74. 100 Things I Need/Want To Control
75. 100 Fears I Have About Giving Up Control
76. 100 Answered Prayers
77. 100 People I’d Like To Meet
78. 100 Reasons Why I Get Jealous
79. 100 People I Admire
80. 100 Tasks I’ve Been Procrastinating
81. 100 Memories From My Past
82. 100 Things That Nourish Me
83. 100 Things I Haven’t Finished
84. 100 Things I’m Glad I’ve Done
85. 100 Things I’ll Never Do Again
86. 100 Ways To Generate Income
87. 100 Principles To Live By
88. 100 People I Want To Forgive
89. 100 People I Want To Forgive Me
90. 100 Things To Forgive Myself For
91. 100 Mistakes I Have Made
92. 100 Lessons I Have Learned
93. 100 Ways To Be Healthier
94. 100 Things That Make Me Cry
95. 100 Things That Make Me Laugh
96. 100 Things I’d Delegate
97. 100 Thing I Want For My Birthday
98. 100 Possessions I’m Tired Of Owning
99. 100 Responsibilities That I’d Like To Avoid
100. 100 Things To Write A List Of 100 About

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How many times have you gone through explaining a problem to a friend, and before he could say a word about it you had already figured out the solution by yourself? The very act of explaining a problem out loud can, by itself, be enough to solve it.

How can this deceptively simple strategy work so well? How can we leverage it, transforming it in a problem-solving technique we can use at anytime?

The Magic Behind Explaining Problems Out Loud

Communicating your problems out loud has several advantages over silently thinking about them:

1. Clarifying Your Thoughts

In order to put your problem in a communicable form you must clarify it, stating it in objective terms. To articulate your message, you are forced to mentally organize all information you have about the problem. Moreover, by making your problem explicit, you free it from useless psychological noise, such as your anxiety or frustration for not being able to solve it.

Putting your problem in words will tremendously help you grasp it: language is not only a tool of communication as many believe, but also a tool of thought (for more on that, check ‘Top 3 Reasons to Improve Your Vocabulary‘).

2. Uncovering Hidden Assumptions

Explaining your problem to someone else is particularly effective when you assume no knowledge on the other person’s part. A good rule of thumb that works especially well for technical problems is pretending you’re explaining them to your grandma.

By assuming the other person’s total lack of knowledge on the subject, you focus on explaining what you know, instead of focusing on figuring out solutions. By making your knowledge and assumptions explicit, you often access different or overlooked data, and thus access entirely new avenues of thought.

3. Engaging Different Parts of the Brain

Saying the problem out loud engages many more areas of the brain than merely thinking about it. That’s why pretending that you’re explaining the problem to someone — but doing so only in thinking — is of little use. According to cognitive philosopher Daniel Dennett:

“[…] consciousness developed as a way to internalize talking to oneself. Speaking words triggers parts of the brain involved in moving the diaphragm, tongue, lips, vocal chords, etc. Hearing words triggers parts of the brain connected to the ears. Speaking aloud can be a bad survival strategy, especially when you’re thinking about the chief’s wife, so we developed consciousness as an internal monologue. It works, but it doesn’t exercise as many areas of the brain as speaking and hearing your own words. […]” (source: WikiWikiWeb).

Rubber Ducking

If explaining a problem is usually enough to solve it by itself, why would you need someone listening to you?

You don’t. Next time you’re stuck with a problem, why don’t you try explaining your problem to an inanimate object, such as, say, a rubber duck?

I know, your parents have warned you about people who talk to objects — but the fact is that it works. Telling your problem to a rubber duck is as effective as telling your problem to a human (if not more). Flesh, feather or plastic, it doesn’t matter of what material your listener is made of: the principles that make this technique effective always work.

If it serves to reduce your resistance and feeling of weirdness towards the idea of explaining problems to objects, be aware that the concept is rather popular in the software development industry. There’s even a term coined for it: ‘rubber ducking’ (popularized by the book The Pragmatic Programmer, a must-read for software developers).

“Are you saying I should replace real people and start talking to rubber ducks?”

Well, not replacing — but what about developing the habit of always consulting your rubber duck first? I don’t mean to slight us humans, but rubber ducks do in fact have some advantages:

• Rubber ducks never interrupt your flow of thinking.
• You don’t need to be worried if you are bothering the rubber duck with your problems.
• Rubber ducks don’t gossip about your private problems with other rubber ducks.
• Your trusted rubber duck is never busy and is always waiting for your inquiries.

Give rubber ducking a try. Once you get past the initial odd sensation of talking to a thing, you’ll certainly enjoy the feeling of convenience and independence it brings; not to mention you’ll also save a lot of your time as well as other people’s.

And, in case the rubber duck doesn’t solve your problem, just go ahead and explain it again to a friend. By then, you’ll have the problem much more well-defined and articulated, dramatically increasing the chances that that friend will be able to help you.

Silent Rubber Ducking

You should always practice rubber ducking out loud — but there are situations when you can’t make noises or simply can’t afford the social awkwardness of it (“excuse me while I talk to my duck…”). Fear not: do your rubber ducking in writing instead — sure, you won’t have the benefits of verbalization, but the technique still works fine.

One way to do it that works particularly well is to write an e-mail message explaining your problem. Pretend you’re going to send it to the smartest (and busiest) person in the world. Describe the problem in detail, the solutions you tried so far and why they didn’t work. List your assumptions and make sure you include all relevant information. Be both thorough and objective.

When you are done writing the message, you’ll probably have had many ideas to try out. If not, find a specialized forum and just send it as it is: with your perfectly-crafted message, I’m sure the Internet gods will help you.

Get Your Own Rubber Duck

Ready to start rubber ducking? As you imagined, there’s not much to it, except getting yourself a rubber duck. Well, it doesn’t need to be an actual rubber duck – any inanimate object will do. But it pays off choosing one that you really like: this will be a long-term relationship, after all.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Real rubber ducks: the technique is called ‘rubber ducking’ for a reason. And besides, it’s hard to beat that classic yellow look.
2. The 6 Dilbert characters: pick your favorite or use all of them together (this works particularly well combined with Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats technique – more about that in a future post).
3. Full-blown cardboard stand-ups: I’ve seen these used by at least one software developer. I don’t think it gets more hardcore than that — unless you prefer an inflatable coworker, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

As for me, my dedicated problem-solver, sitting next to my monitor and dutifully serving me, is my dragon Bob. He has the entertaining quirk of turning his head to always look straight in my eyes — undoubtedly an appealing effect, especially for optical illusion enthusiasts like myself.

If you’re interested, you can build your own ‘Bob’ using a paper model [pdf, 244 KB] (both video and paper model are courtesy of Grand Illusions).

Happy rubber ducking!

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• Topics du Jour: Give Your Life Direction in Less than 10 Minutes a Day
• The Medici Effect
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