Oblique Strategies

Share ONE Oblique Strategy from the deck created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. These are lateral thinking prompts designed to break creative deadlocks.

Instructions

1. Select ONE strategy randomly from the list below
2. Present it simply and clearly
3. Optionally offer a brief reflection on how it might apply to the user's current situation
4. Do NOT explain or over-analyze - let the strategy speak for itself

The Strategies

Select one at random:

• Honor thy error as a hidden intention
• What would your closest friend do?
• What to increase? What to reduce?
• Are there sections? Consider transitions
• Try faking it!
• Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
• Use an old idea
• State the problem in words as clearly as possible
• Only one element of each kind
• What would your closest friend do?
• What wouldn't you do?
• Courage!
• Go slowly all the way round the outside
• Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do
• Don't be frightened of clichés
• Don't be frightened to display your talents
• Breathe more deeply
• Give way to your worst impulse
• Cascades
• You are an engineer
• Faced with a choice, do both
• Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
• Children's voices -speaking -singing
• Cluster analysis
• Consider different fading systems
• Consult other sources -promising -unpromising
• Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
• Decorate, decorate
• Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor
• Destroy -Loss -Decay
• Discard an axiom
• Disconnect from desire
• Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them
• Distorting time
• Do nothing for as long as possible
• Do something boring
• Do the washing up
• Do the words need changing?
• Don't avoid what is easy
• Don't break the silence
• Don't stress one thing more than another
• Emphasize differences
• Emphasize repetitions
• Emphasize the flaws
• Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation
• Fill every beat with something
• Get your neck massaged
• Ghost echoes
• Give the game away
• Go outside. Shut the door.
• How would you have done it?
• Humanize something free of error
• Idiot glee
• Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar
• Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events
• Infinitesimal gradations
• Intentions -credibility of -Loss of -nobility of
• Into the impossible
• Is it finished?
• Is something missing?
• Is the tuning appropriate?
• Just carry on
• Left channel, right channel, centre channel
• Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
• Listen to the quiet voice
• Look at a very small object, look at its centre
• Look at the order in which you do things
• Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
• Lost in useless territory
• Lowest common denominator check -Loss of interest
• Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
• Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
• Make it more sensual
• Mechanize something idiosyncratic
• Mute and continue
• Not building a wall but making a brick
• Once the search is in progress, something will be found
• Only a part, not the whole
• Overtly resist change
• Pae White's non-blank graphic metacard
• Pay attention to distractions
• Put in earplugs
• Question the heroic approach
• Remember those quiet evenings
• Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
• Remove the middle, extend the edges
• Repetition is a form of change
• Revaluation (a warm feeling)
• Reverse
• Short circuit
• Shut the door and listen from outside
• Simple subtraction
• Simply a matter of work
• Slow preparation, fast execution
• Spectrum analysis
• Take a break
• Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
• Tape your mouth
• The inconsistency principle
• The tape is now the music
• Think of the radio
• Tidy up
• Trust in the you of now
• Turn it upside down
• Twist the spine
• Use 'unqualified' people
• Use fewer notes
• Use filters
• Use your own ideas
• Voice your suspicions
• Water
• What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
• What is the reality of the situation?
• What mistakes did you make last time?
• What would your closest friend do?
• What wouldn't you do?
• Work at a different speed
• Would anybody want it?
• You can only make one dot at a time
• You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
• Your mistake was a hidden intention
• [blank white card]

Presentation Format

Present the strategy like this:

Oblique Strategy:

[The strategy]

If the user seems stuck on a specific problem, you may briefly suggest how the strategy might relate, but keep it minimal. The power is in the user's own interpretation.