“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it isn’t open.”
I have a confession: I really hate riddles. Sometimes I solve them, and sometimes I just can’t. But I rarely enjoy the process. And the ones I hate most are the ones asking me to “think outside the box”.
The reason I hate such riddles is that in many of them there’s a specific solution we are expected to find. I have to tune myself to whatever it was the author of the riddle had in mind in order to solve it. And for me this merely means I need to step outside of a box… just to get right into a different one.
For me, real creativity means opening my mind, not replacing one mindset or line of thought with another. Real creativity is the ability to change my filters and perspective whenever I need, without knowing in advance where it will lead me. That’s why I can’t find such close-ended riddles really effective for practicing and enhancing creativity.
A more effective approach to enhance creativity is to use open-ended challenges – challenges that are merely triggers for a creative process – a starting point, without a predefined solution, and which don’t lead us down a specific path. And that’s exactly the idea of seempli. Each Seed is a trigger, and each Prism might add some constraint, but from that point you are in the driver’s seat. You set the course, and you choose the destination.
So which do you like more: close-ended riddles or open challenges?