Thinking Out of the Box
Think out of the box? What box? Why is it a box? Where is out of the box?
I think we’ve all heard the phrase “Think out of the Box” at some point in our lives. It could be during a class when a teacher ask your friend to answer a creative question or during a work meeting where your boss is questioning your quality of work or maybe you are the one saying that. This phrase is almost always told as a criticism to ward a person and 99% of the time the one that was told this phrase would look confused, I know I would.
Think out of the box? What box? Why is it a box? Where is out of the box? …
Those were the questions that flashed past my head. Then the second half of the day, my whole mind would be completely occupied by those questions. However, throughout my career, I have picked up a few wisdom on navigating through this situation:
1. What is the “Box”?
The “Box” is not a literal box, but a metaphor to the boundaries of your understanding and the limitations of yourself. When we are fresh grads new into an industry, we have no actual experience and unrefined skills, we often doesn’t know where we are in terms of competency. Therefore, there should be no “Box” in the beginning.
The “Box” will start to form and grow as we understand ourselves more by acquiring experience and honing our skills. As the “Box” grows, more things falls under your control, however, it doesn’t grow linearly. When we encounter setbacks, the “Box” shrinks. In some cases, the “Box” grew too big and a couple of setbacks crushed the “Box”. This analogy would be we think we know everything, but a couple of mistakes sent us crashing back down to earth as described by Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Conversely, the “Box” can be deliberately crushed when there is potential for it to grow. In this scenario, we deliberately doubting ourselves when our capabilities exceed our current expectations. Sounds familiar? It’s Impostor Syndrome.
As you can see, the “Box” is a constantly evolving, delicate structure of one’s experience, knowledge and limitations. Now that we know, what is the “Box”, but…
2. Why is it a “Box”?
A box symbolizes a limitation, a boundary that separates a space into two. In my opinion, it is very important for us to imagine ourselves as the box. Being the box, we take control of what we can do, know what are our limitations are and place reasonable expectations of ourselves. Do remember that the growth of the box is subjected to external pressure but being in control, we can always tune our expectations and grow at a pace of our liking.
Do not imagine a box, be THE box.
3. Where is out of the “Box”?
At this point, it is pretty evident that “out of the box” means out of our capabilities and expectations. Where we are as a species, is all the effort of us thinking out of our collective boxes. All the scientific breakthroughs, technological advancements are the culmination of our efforts to understand more of ourselves, thinking beyond our current understandings and growing our boxes beyond what we thought possible.
Long story short: To “think out of the box”, you need understand what you can do, what your goals are, what are your current limitations and slowly plan, learn, trial and error towards your goals. Often times, thinking out of the box isn’t just the `Eureka!` moment but also the effort and experience accumulated prior to the moment. It is hard at the beginning when we don’t know anything. Have patience, as we gain experience, it will get easier.
Thanks for reading my understanding of what the phrase “thinking out of the box” Hopefully this proves useful for all of you. Sub ’n share if you find it helpful~~