JONTILLMAN.COM | Part of the problem since 1976

If you haven’t heard of the Oblique Strategies, I would like to introduce you to one of the coolest tools in my creative arsenal. Paraphrasing from the best website about the cards that I can find

The Oblique Strategies are a deck of cards that has its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt that they tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you’re running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind.

Each card is enigmatic and designed to shake whatever perception of your work you are holding on to at the moment. Their advice runs from the simple and direct

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

to the sublime

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

There have been four editions of the cards published since 1975, and a fifth edition will be available from Brian Eno later this week.

You can give it a try by picking a card at random from the virtual deck.