Follow the author through a 30 day experiment of using Brian Eno's and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies in a bog standard work environment.

I heard about the Oblique Strategies a few years ago and have always thought it is an intriguing technique. I think there is a creative element to most people’s jobs nowadays with the rise of the knowledge worker :) whether peoplerealise it or not. I certainly consider my job as a creative endeavour, so it seemed logical to me to experiment with a technique that could help.

I see Oblique Strategies as a little crooked mirror that you can pick up and makes you look at yourself from different perspective, or a little mental plunger that helps unblock your mind (i’ll stop with the bad analogies now). My plan is that over the next 30 (working) days as I go through my normal day, if there is a moment where I feel stuck or need some inspiration I will:

*Make a note of the situation, what i was trying to do how i felt and what i was thinking

*Pull a card from the deck and make a note of it

*Reflect on the card and take action

*Write a note about what I thought and what action I took off the back of the card

*At the end of the day write a post on this blog about the day.

So that is it. I have no idea whether using Oblique Strategies will actually be useful or whether the content I generate doing will be interesting, i guess that is why its an experiment :)