Building your world
You say you want wanna start something new
Time to diversify our normal riddles with some different kind lateral exercises - world building ones.
Build a world using these elements:
- Electricity
- Rodeo
- Retirement
An example, at the end of this email.
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We all live in our heads
A couple of years ago, the phrase “we live in a bubble” popped (pun intended) up.
Driven by how social media platform filter their content and spoon feed us only things we want to hear, we started to realize we all see the world with different eyes.
Creative types have known this for ages, though.
When you work in advertising, you realize your main job is to frame the world around your client’s product in a certain way.
You’re paid to tell people what they want to hear.
In order to make it interesting, you associate things that don’t normally associate.
Doing this often will make creativity easier for anyone. Because talent will only get you so far.
Probably the most popular template for this is called Systematic Inventive Thinking.
So if you want to inspire others with your creative world-building, try to do it often in your head.
Be it on your way to work or when you’re sitting and listening to music, try to use various objects or concepts you see and mix them in new ways.
Even if you don’t need creative thinking for a living, I guarantee you’ll get excited more often just by seeing how many endless world-building possibilities there are.
Potential answer:
In a post-apocalyptic world, everyone needs to work. Retirement is virtually impossible. The few people that manage to achieve it have to compete in a vicious competition. Every year, 100 people compete in running from electricity powered mechanical bulls in a grotesque simulation of the Pamplona event. The mortality rate is 90%, but the ones that survive get to retire.
Going to cover world building and creativity a bit more in the next newsletters, as I feel they sync well with lateral thinking.
How did you feel about today’s change of pace? Feel free to reply and let me know.