Hack #23: Deck Yourself Out

Creativity decks are sets of suggestive aphorisms for getting creatively unstuck -- for example, unblocking your writer's block. They come in several forms: as decks of cards, as PC and PDA applications, and even as scripts that you can consult via the Web, wherever you are.

Additions and Suggestions

The Observation Deck comes with a small book, a box, and a large deck of cards. All this might be too bulky to carry around if you want to consult it frequently. Junk the box and the deck of cards, but keep the little book. Number the book's "hacks" from 1 to 50. You can now use another randomiser instead of the deck of cards. I use the hundredths-of-seconds readout on my wristwatch's stopwatch setting, just discarding numbers that are too high.

-- Ron Hale-Evans [[DateTime?(2006-03-06T20:47:15Z)]]

Discussion

Freeform discussion of this hack goes here.

Links

• Mac OS X widget for the Oblique Strategies: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/oblique.html
• Oblique Strategies web site: http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies
• Oblique Strategies online: http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
• Creative Whack Pack and related materials (draws a random Whack Pack card): http://www.creativethink.com
• Buy an official Oblique Strategies deck: http://www.enoshop.co.uk
• Printable PDF deck of the Oblique Strategies: http://www.stretta.com/~matthew/resources/oblique
• GreaseMonkey? script for the Oblique Strategies: http://masculinehygiene.com/sburke/Oblique_Strategies.user.js
• GreaseMonkey? script also available at http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScriptsGeneric

Errata

Errata go here.

Hack Author

Ron Hale-Evans

Return to Main Book Page

This is a page for a hack from the book MindPerformanceHacks by Ron Hale-Evans.