Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #23. Deck Yourself Out

Creativity decks are sets of suggestive aphorisms for getting creatively unstuck—for example, unblocking your writer's block. They come in several forms: as decks of cards, as PC and PDA applications, and even as scripts that you can consult via the Web, wherever you are.

Many hacks in this book use some form of randomized input to stimulate creativity or to break deadlocked decisions, such as seeding your mental random-number generator [Hack #19], rolling the dice [Hack #49], not overthinking it [Hack #48], and forcing connections [Hack #20]. This should not surprise you. Human use of random stimuli is ancient, ranging from staring at the clouds, to reading entrails, to poring over Tarot cards. The human brain is well adapted to finding patterns in a wide range of stimuli, so it's smart to use this natural functionality to focus conscious thought and capture less-conscious thoughts.

In recent years, a new genre of random stimulus has been developed that I'll call the creativity deck. Designers of creativity decks aim to fill them with ideas and strategies that are good in themselves and don't require so much dreamy dissociation to work—as cloud gazing does, for example. These decks have become enormously popular, so there are now many to choose from. And they're available in many different formats, so you can select a deck and format to suit your tastes and needs.

In Action

This hack will examine three of what I consider the most important and popular ...