Card #30 – ”Make Your Own Rules” from the Creative Whack Pack

Available on the iOS App Store and as a physical deck of cards

According to ancient prophecy, whoever could untie the “Gordian Knot” was destined to become King of Asia. All who tried failed to solve this strangely complicated puzzle.

Then Alexander the Great had a turn. After fruitless attempts to find a starting point, he was stymied. Finally, he said,

“I’ll just have to make up my own knot-untying rules.”

Alexander pulled out his sword and sliced the knot in half. Asia is fated to him.

Most advances have come when someone challenged the rules and tried a different approach.

• With his postulation that the earth circles the sun, the Polish astronomer Copernicus broke the rule that the universe is anthropocentric.

• With her evocative love odes, the Greek poet Sappho broke the rule that great lyric poetry was outside the province of women.

• With his use of trailing codas and double orchestral fugues, Beethoven broke the rules of how a symphony should be composed.

• With his lightning attacks of mechanized equipment, the German general Erwin Rommel broke the rules of how to fight a battle.

• With his equating mass and energy as different forms of the same phenomenon, Einstein broke the rules of Newtonian physics.

Think about it: almost every advance in art, medicine, agriculture, engineering, marketing, communications, education, politics, and design has occurred when someone challenged the rules and tried another approach.

Pablo Picasso put it well when he said, “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.”

— What are two rules you can challenge in how you think about your issue?

— Which ones can you temporarily suspend?