The Creative Contrarian

Wise Fool Strategy # 11Use Your Forgettery

“My ‘forgettery’ has been just as important to my success as my memory.”

— Henry Miller, American Novelist

The Wise Fool believes knowledge is a wonderful thing, but that forgetting what you know — at the appropriate time — can be an important technique for gaining a fresh perspective. This is illustrated in the following story.

A teacher invited a student to his house for tea. They talked for a while, and then it was teatime. The teacher poured some tea into the student's cup. Even after the cup was full, he continued to pour, and soon tea flowed onto the floor. The student exclaimed, “Stop pouring; the tea isn't going into the cup.” The teacher replied, “The same is true with you. If you are to receive any new ideas, you must first empty out your mental cup.” Moral: Without the ability to forget, our minds remain cluttered up with ready-made assumptions — thus preventing us from asking the questions that might lead to new ideas.

One of my favorite workshop exercises involves making paper airplanes. I assign the participants to different teams and give each team 50 sheets of colored paper. Then I draw a line at the back of the room. Each team has five minutes to see how many airplanes it can make that fly past the line. The one with the most is the winner. The most common approach is to fold the sheets into conventional paper airplane ...