Try Thinking of It This Way

Opposite Thinking Clickable Link

 

Analogy Thinking Clickable Link

Before working with the Opposite Thinking and Analogy Thinking models, I took a bit of time to try the warmup of writing about something that brought me joy this week. I thought that might be a good one to try because we are all so stressed out and worrying about COVID and the election. At first it felt a bit forced, I think because the gazillion things I am worrying about just keep poking at me all the time. It was actually hard to settle my mind down long enough to think of something joyful. I finally settled on something that I don’t know was exactly joyful, but it brought a smile, for sure. I’m not sure if it helped or not in terms of getting creativity going, but it was a nice little reminder to stop and consider the good things in life.

For the Opposite Thinking exercise, I thought that would be the easier place to begin because the explanation made more sense to me than the Analogy model. However, as I gathered my sources, I found it difficult to use that model because I was thinking in very black or white ways. My project is more nuanced, I think, so it was hard to wrap my head around how to use the Opposite Thinking model effectively. In fact, I wound up putting it aside yesterday and decided I would come back to it today. While I did end up trying it again, I was having the same trouble with it. I do think the nature of my project has everything to do with why this approach was less successful because the Analogy Thinking was much more productive.

Although the Analogy Thinking model seemed more ambiguous to me at first, it ended up being the most helpful.  I came up with many resources to use for my ideas and was able to rework my model in a way that let me post a bunch of different yet related ideas on one side. Once I had all of the ideas in one space, I approached the brainstorming much as I do when developing an argumentative piece of writing. In essence, all the ideas are listed on little sticky notes, and I move them around. If it is a hard copy, I do it on a large sheet of paper. If I do it electronically, I just move virtual sticky notes around the screen. As I mix and match, new connections arise, and I have a separate color of sticky notes for the idea nuggets. The Analogy Thinking model allowed me to re-envision the numerous good ideas I had seen so they could morph into other possibilities in my mind. In effect, I think it helped me to better see the best and worst in all of the ideas while drawing connections that I don’t think I would have made otherwise.

Overall, I think the Analogy Thinking model would be the option I would be most likely to deploy in my classes because it does a really nice job of making the mix and match brainstorming process far more relatable and obvious. Since my work often requires the blending and diverging of ideas, I can see the approach allowing students (and me) to actively seek out the differences and pressure points between ideas. These tend to be harder to see, but with the visual nature of the Analogy Thinking format, I believe it would help lay bare myriad ideas.