Thinking inside the box

Last week I wrote about how I used the scan function on my car radio to entertain myself when no stations would come in clearly.

I also bemoaned the lack of a jazz station near Monterey.

Hey Elizabeth, take another look at your radio.

A reader, Sony Holland, a jazz singer out of San Francisco, emailed me to say there's an AM station, KRML 1410, that plays jazz 24 hours a day out of Carmel.

Talk about thinking inside the box.

I never even considered the AM band. Once in awhile I would land on it by accident when aiming for the scan button, but I never actually looked for anything on it. Too afraid I would stumble upon Rush Limbaugh or somebody like that.

As someone who prides herself on being imaginative, innovative and open minded, my failure to even think about the AM dial embarrassed me. What else am I missing simply by not seeing something that's right in front of me?

Unfortunately, I don't know. And that's what makes this particular mind-trap so sticky. It took the kindly advice of a stranger to get me to see what I had been missing.

Bookstore and library shelves are full of books on ways to improve creative thinking and move past habitual practices. In fact, one of these, Conceptual Blockbusting, by Jim Adams of Stanford, was the first place I encountered the box you are supposed to think outside of.

It's actually a brain teaser that asks you to connect nine dots arranged in a square with one in the center, with one continuous straight line.

In order to solve the puzzle, it's necessary to break through the imaginary "box" formed by the dots. It seems obvious once you see it but it's unusual for someone to get it on their own.

Another example occurred in a creativity class I took. The instructor asked us to touch the ceiling of the classroom. Most of us stood on tippy toe and reached way up, making little hops to get higher.

One or two students climbed up on the auditorium chairs before reaching up. I suppose several people who'd stayed on the floor thought "I wish I'd thought of that." I actually thought "Hey, no fair, you can't do that."

So in this case, my own self-imposed rules were literally keeping me on the ground. The rule against standing on furniture seems reasonable, but the more powerful mental rule against sticking out in the crowd or doing something crazy is more dangerous.

So even though venturing onto the AM dial for a jazz station doesn't seem that daring, I am grateful to Sony Holland for jostling me into looking there. One way Ms. Holland seems to maintain her creativity is by living in San Francisco but reading the Hollister Free Lance onlline.

If you want to hear the result, you can listen to clips at www.sonyholland.com.