Non-Obvious Thinking: How to See What Others Miss

Non-obvious thinking often requires questioning the things that we know so we can shift and broaden our perspective.

Confidence is belief in yourself. Certainty is belief in your beliefs. Confidence is a bridge. Certainty is a barricade.

Creating your own argot can start by twisting an existing word to convey an original idea.

One way to zero in on what makes your idea unique is to think in taglines, summarizing your concept as succinctly as possible. Using fewer words to communicate something that might otherwise feel complex can lead you to develop an argot that others will find repeatable.

If you want your ideas to be provocative and memorably non-obvious, the words you choose to describe them make a big difference.

The words you use can help your idea stand out as non-obvious or be dismissed as stale and obvious.

What do two trends from disparate reports or industries have in common? Is there an idea that might be inspired by putting them together? A clever way to use trends is to spark new ideas and intersections through the cultural shifts that the trends describe.

When you need to come up with new solutions to a problem, it can help to imagine how someone in another situation might solve or respond to it. Then find intersections between their methods and yours.

Seeking intersections can help you define a twist in your thinking and lead to a new combined direction that is better than its components.