Outside The Box

Brainpower Newsletter

You may remember a previous newsletter where I suggested sniffing rosemary as a way to wake up your brain. There are other scents that can affect your brain too. They are not proven, as far as I know, but your own experience may provide the evidence you need to say they work or they don't. In any case, you know how I feel about these things. If it is safe and cheap, why not give it a try?

The scent of lemon seems to work for many people as a brain energizer. Users claim that they feel more alert and more able to concentrate. Other energizers include oils of peppermint and cypress.

Relaxants include ylang ylang, geranium and rose. The idea here is that sometimes you are too "wound up" for effective thinking. Relaxing can bring you back to a state where you can start again on a mental challenge, this time with more clarity.

You can buy these as essential oils, and put a few drops in a diffuser, or in your bath. Alternately, you can put a drop or two on a cotton ball or piece of cloth and inhale the scent. Of course, if you have a lemon, peppermint leaves, or a rose handy, you can just inhale these in their most natural state.

One final note. Some people are allergic to some of these oils. Even if you are not, be careful when you use them around others.

Here's an interesting bit of news from the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. They recently did a study in which more than 100 volunteers had to recall as many words that begin with a particular letter as possible. Then they passed a 2-milliamp current (less than a small battery) through electrodes on the volunteers' foreheads. With the current on, (starting again with a new letter) the volunteers came up with an average of 20 percent more words.

They did have some irritation from the electrodes, but no other side effects were noted. It isn't clear why this works, but it may be that the current allows cells in the prefrontal cortex, the brain region associated with verbal memory, to transmit signals more easily.

I'll let you know if I come across more research in this area. Using electricity to modify the brain isn't all that new, by the way. Historians think that almost two thousand years ago Greek physicians had patients apply a live torpedo fish, which is a type of electric ray, to the forehead as a cure for headaches.

When brainpower meets business, you always hear creative minds talking about "thinking outside of the box." What is the box? It is the normal way of looking at things and doing things. It is all of the assumptions that almost everyone involved is making. To start thinking out of the box then, you identify and challenge all the assumptions and "normal" ways of doing things.

Of course, the difficult part about challenging assumptions is identifying the assumptions. We tend to think of things like motorcycles having two wheels as a given, not as an assumption that we can drop. You have to dig out every assumption you can find to get the most creative alternative. Writing them down is helpful too.

Designing a new motorcycle might mean writing down assumptions like "speed matters," "it has to run on gas" and "it needs two wheels." It isn't that you expect to prove these wrong, but because challenging these can lead to creative possibilities. Besides, maybe the time has come for an electric three-wheeled motorcycle.

You can also get out of the box by "assuming the absurd," which is just another form of challenging assumptions. It can be either a fun or annoying exercise, depending on how open-minded you are. You just start making absurd assumptions, then finding ways to make sense of them. An easy way to do it is by asking "what if."

You look at the toothpaste tube and ask, "What if sugar came out of it instead of toothpaste?" It seems absurd at first, but as you work with the idea, you realize that maybe not sugar, but chip dip should be in tubes. No messy bowls full of broken chips and stale dip. You can just apply the dip straight to the chip from the tube - exactly the amount you want. It's a saleable idea.

For a longer article on thinking outside of the box, and related resources, visit the page: Thinking Outside The Box.

Until next time,

Steve

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