Sometime back, one of my colleagues at work was finding it hard to keep up with the deliverables.

When I politely enquired if I could help, she said she knows how to do the task and has been doing well over the months. Just recently she had started to make silly mistakes, missing out on some things etc that then takes time to find out where has she missed.

I suggested this happens when one is doing a repetitive task in the same manner over a long time (which exactly was her case –generating test cases). Furthermore I added, if the sequence of tasks does not matter, she should now do it in a manner different than the pattern she followed since start. Also if possible she should change the position of her workplace i.e. go to another free cubicle/team room and complete the work.

Result, in couple of weeks she was able to recover and get back to her previous speed, even bettering it occasionally.

Our minds are designed in a manner that to keep alert and active it has to be worked in different ways. If used only in one way, it can fall into a monotonous pattern, a state in which mistakes are likely to happen. It’s not that the brain is not productive, rather it has just one way of seeing things; While the solution may lie a bit outside the ‘linear’ sight (the “out of the box” zone).

This is that part of the mind where artists tap to create songs, writers to create stories, actors to create movies/plays and so on.

I am reminded of a small story. There was a science class going on at a high school. The professor was speaking about how tens of thousands of dollars are being spent by government to finance a science project to invent an ink pen that would be capable of writing even in space, miles away from earth.

One of the student politely asked, “Sir, what is the point. We could have just used a pencil. Tens of thousands of dollars could had been saved”

 My experience has been that our present day work conditions are such that there is a good possibility of unexpected situations and challenges to show up. There are times where previous planning has to be put aside and a new approach is needed to solve the situation at hand.

Thus there is an increasing need of creative workers who could yield innovative suggestions for which they are not formally trained.

Few simple unorthodox ways that can help to be creative and effective at work are

• While taking an elevator to office floor, cover part of the journey with elevator and the rest using stairs. And use myriad possible combinations. For example if your office is at ninth floor, you may use the combination -5E4S (5 with elevator, 4 with stairs), 6E3S, 8E1S etc.

• At the parking lot, (if not many cars are around!!) or at any other spacious place, drive your car in reverse circles few number of times.

• While in the washroom for no apparent reason- do a moonwalk!!

• Frequently change your place of sitting at work.

• Interact with team members of cross team/department and try to understand their world. (Which would be very different from yours. You will get new information, insight and ideas)

• Comb your hairs in a symmetrically opposite manner (as seen in mirror image) one day.

• Do not comb your hairs at all –one day a week

• Try doing your work in many ways. For example if you are used to make presentations using PowerPoint, try doing it using Keynote(If you have time of course)

 Has anyone else tried or could suggest some ‘nonsensical’ ways that could actually be useful?