Card #38 – ”Reverse” from the Creative Whack Pack
Available on the iOS App Store and as a physical deck of cards

Inventor Andrew Mercer: “You can’t see the good ideas behind you by looking twice as hard at what’s in front of you.”
In the mid-1950s, many drivers in Seattle began discovering small pockmarks on their windshields.
Some people believed that atomic tests by the Russians had contaminated the atmosphere and this was returning to earth in a glass-etching dew.
Another theory suggested that tiny acid drops from Seattle’s recently constructed roads were being flung against the windshields.
A team of experts investigated the mystery and found that the pitting was an old phenomenon, not a new one.
All windshields develop “scars” as a car ages; it’s part of the normal wear on a vehicle.
The mass hysteria developed because as the reports of the pitting came to the attention of more people, they checked their own cars, usually by looking through the glass from the outside of the car.
What had broken out was an epidemic not of windshield pitting, but of reverse windshield viewing.
By reversing their viewpoint, people discovered something that had always been there but they had never noticed.
When everyone else is gazing at a gorgeous sunset, why not turn around to see the blues and violets behind you?
Exercise: spend a minute describing a current problem. Now imagine someone who is your opposite (for example, their cognitive skills, sex, age, experience, or economic status). How would this person describe this problem?
Remember: when everyone zigs, it’s time to zag.
— How can you reverse your viewpoint?
— What patterns might you discover if you viewed your situation from the outside in?
— What if you viewed the most important part of your problem as the least consequential?
— What if you ignored the most time-consuming part?