Oblique Strategies

Oblique Strategies were developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, and first published as a card deck in January of 1975. They were subtitled "Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas" and later published as revised decks in subsequent editions.

"Most of our assumptions have outlived their usefulness."
-Marshall McLuhan

There are basically two ways to use these cards; either as a whole set of streaming possibilities, or by pulling a random card from a shuffled deck and using the idea to resolve a dilemma. When pulling a random card, the rule is that you trust the card even if the strategy doesn't seem relevant at the time.

At their core, this deck of cards, or rather the questions or phrases on each card, are designed to shake up our assumptions. At least, that is the way I choose to view and simplify their effect and usefulness.

"Hindsight is 20/20." Cliche? Yes... but consider this question I have for you... have you ever been in a situation where you had to take action, or make a decision, only to realize later that there were other, perhaps better choices that you could have made? What if you could have seen those better choices at the time?

That has happened to me many times, and I'm sure it has happened to you. If you can relate to this concept, then you understand the influence of "being in the moment" on your thinking. It's related to not being able to "see the forest for the trees."

When you're in the moment and the pressure is on, sometimes you're too close to the situation. Even when the pressure isn't obvious, present moment thinking is difficult to master. Oblique Strategies are for just those times.

Oblique Strategies are questions or suggestions to enable you to "think outside the box" or as I like to say, "what box?"

As Brian Eno described in an interview...

"The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation - particularly in studios - tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you're in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that's going to yield the best results."

These are quite the words of wisdom, and I believe his thoughts directly address my notion that our assumptions are the evil doers here. The thing is, you don't even need "panic" to put you in that mode. Most of us are creatures of habit, and that includes habitual thinking. To quote a line from a Steven Seagal movie, "Assumption is the mother of all ****-ups."

Use Oblique Strategies to blast your assumptions to smitherines and move to a higher level of thinking. As Albert Einstein put it...

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them."

Here are some examples of the Oblique Strategies...

• You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
• Emphasize the flaws
• Ask people to work against their better judgement
• Is there something missing?
• What would your closest friend do?
• Ask your body
• Trust in the you of now
• Reverse

Some of them are related to music and recording, such as... "use fewer notes," or "fill every beat with something." These are because of the origin of whole concept, but you can interpret some of those to suit your own situation as well.

You can use them in combination as well. "Reverse" can mean "to do the opposite." So, "fill every (blank) with something" can become "fill every (blank) with nothing."

This reminds me of one of the tenets of neuro linguistic programming which can be summed up like this... "do what works." So, if filling every box with something doesn't work, then fill every box with something else, or nothing at all.

This leads to questions like...

• "What if everything here were important?"
• "What if everything here were unimportant?"
• "What if everything I assume is true is false?"
• "How can I make it better?"
• "What can I do (not do) without?"

I'm sure you can come up with some questions of your own that work to shake you up, and better align your thinking. If you'd like some help, there are a few dynamic web pages that will summon random Oblique Strategies at your command. They tend to come and go, so I apologize if any of the links go sour.

Here is a page that will give you a new strategy each time you reload it. This page is a little more sophisticated.

This page allows you to actually choose the edition you want to pull your next strategy from.

And I'll leave you with this from the Oblique Strategies... "what were you really thinking about just now?"