Card #61 – ”Don Your Fool’s Cap” from the Creative Whack Pack
Available on the iOS App Store and as a physical deck of cards

Donning your Fool’s cap puts you in your “best thinking self.”
You become less dogmatic and more playful.
Less afraid to be the person who asks dumb questions and more skeptical of received “truths.”
Less convinced you’ve got the right answer and more likely to see humor in ambiguous situations.
Less concerned about the consequences of bucking the crowd and more apt to speak candidly.
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “The cleverest of all is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.” Give yourself a license to think differently!
The fool might deny that a problem even exists thereby reframing the situation. Most people think recessions are bad. Not the fool. He says:
“Recessions are good. They make people work more efficiently. People work harder when they are insecure about the future of their jobs.
“Also, most companies have a fair amount of fat in them. Recessions force them to trim back to their fighting weight and be more aggressive.”
The fool can be absurd. Having lost his donkey, a fool got down on his knees and began thanking God. A passerby saw him and asked,
“Your donkey is missing; please tell me why are you thanking God?”
The fool replied,
“I’m thanking Him for seeing to it that I wasn’t riding him at the time. Otherwise, I would be missing as well.”
The fool is metaphorical. When answering the following question on an intelligence test:
“Which is true: A) Birds eat seeds, or B) Seeds eat birds,”
he might answer both A and B because he has seen dead birds on the ground decompose into the soil to fertilize freshly planted seeds.
He notices things other people overlook. He might ask,
“Why do people who pour cream into their coffee do so after the coffee is already in the cup, rather than pouring the cream in first and saving themselves the trouble of stirring?”
He’ll apply the rules of one arena to a different one. He’ll go to a football game and imagine he’s in church. He’ll see the players huddling and think they’re praying. He’ll see the vendors in the stands and think that they’re taking up a collection. He’ll see the fans’ hero worship of the star quarterback and imagine that he’s witnessing the Second Coming.
The fool can be cryptic. He’ll say the best way to see something is with your ears. Initially, this may seem a little weird, but after you’ve thought about it, you just might agree that listening to a poem or a story conjures up more images in your mind than watching TV.
The great Danish physicist Niels Bohr felt that thinking like a fool was essential to coming up with breakthrough ideas. During a tense brainstorming session, he told a colleague:
“We all know your idea is crazy. The question is, whether it is crazy enough.”
The great benefit of the fool’s antics and observations is that they stimulate our thinking. They jolt us in the same way that a splash of cold water awakens us when we’re drowsy.
— Suppose a fool told you that you are absolutely wrong in your two most basic assumptions about your issue. Think of three reasons why he is correct.
— What seemingly outlandish statements can you make that perfectly describe the true reality of your situation?
— What off-beat things about your issue would a fool notice that might escape the attention of everyone else?
— What is absurd?
— Do you have the courage to play the role of the fool?