The Houdini Solution Week – Day III: Not-So-Free Association

Everyone knows about free association. You write down the problem, then you just let your consciousness go wild, writing down anything and everything that pops into your mind. It’s a nonjudgmental technique, and it works beautifully in many situations.

But when you’re thinking inside the box, and depending on just how small a box you’re working in, free association isn’t always the fastest way to get to a solution. While it definitely will generate a lot of ideas, many of those ideas are going to be completely unusable.

But what if free association weren’t free at all? What if every idea that popped into your mind had a price tag on it? What if instead of just writing down anything and everything, you had to pay to write it down? You’d have to stop a second and ask yourself if an idea is literally worth writing down because just submitting it is going to cost you something.

Here’s what to do. You’ll need a bunch of poker chips, some magic markers, and a plastic bowl. Get everyone on the team together, then divide the chips and the markers equally among them.

Next tell them you’re going to do a modified version of free association, the only difference being that every time they have an idea or a thought they want to submit, they need to “pay” for it by putting one of their chips into the bowl.

Let’s say Jim gets the ball rolling with Idea A. He writes an “Aâ€? on one of his chips and drops it in the bowl while the person running the session writes down Jim’s idea and labels it “Idea A/Jimâ€?.

Keep doing this for as long as you want. Then have the group collectively evaluate each of the ideas, exploring the more interesting ones, seeing how many of them actually lead to something. Let’s say it turns out to be Ideas A, J, L, M, R, and V. Finally, empty the bowls and pull out the chips labeled A, J, L, M, R, and V Whoever’s name was on the remaining chips has to spring for beers for the entire team after work.

This is a great exercise that teaches people how to self-edit their creative thinking, submitting only ideas that they really feel good about. Again, if you’ve got time for conventional free association, do it. But when you’re pressed for time and you need to streamline the creative process, go with not-so-free association every time.