In an article a while back, How design magazine featured a
great story which they used to help encourage people to stretch their
creativity—but I think it goes far beyond that.
The story concerned a schoolgirl named Cylie Pastian who
developed bone cancer. One thing she was sad about was that her bones were too
fragile to allow her to continue playing basketball. In response, the players
and coaches at her school in South Dakota invented the Cylie Rule: whenever
there’s a foul, anyone recovering from bone cancer has the right to check into
the game and shoot her team’s free throws.
The article suggest you consider what rule in your life or
organization inhibits creativity, and then come up with a Cylie Rule to replace
it.
Great idea, and I’d suggest extending it to ask what rule or
standard procedure in any part of your life is holding you back and coming up
with a Cylie Rule to overcome it. Here’s one example:
- When
the dishes and other housework pile up, anyone writing a novel has the
right to ask the rest of the family to help out. (If your kids are smart,
suddenly they’ll be writing novels, too…)
Equally important, you can also make up a Cylie Rule that
gives you the right to behave in ways that may be more productive or enjoyable:
- When
attending a boring event of any kind, a creative person has the right to
use his or her creativity to figure out how to get away and do something
more enjoyable (or to make the event more entertaining for themselves and
maybe for others).
- When
stuck in a pattern of interaction with someone else that’s not working,
the creative person has the right to interrupt that pattern with something
unexpected that will change the nature of the interaction.
If you’d like to share your own Cylie Rules, please leave
them in the comments section or send them to me directly at [email protected].
(for regular tips on how to be more creative and productive, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to [email protected])
