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Especially at times when you're confronted by lots of problems, it's useful to appreciate moments of humor. In addition to providing welcome relief from the heaviness of a situation, humor provides an opportunity to experience the kind of thinking that's similar to the thinking that occurs at moments of creative insight. To see this similarity, let's look at a specific creative insight and a specific joke.
Architects used to regard buildings primarily as collections of walls, floors, and ceilings. This way of thinking makes sense because walls, floors, and ceilings are what people see and what construction workers build. Later, innovations in architecture arose when architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, realized that buildings could also be regarded as spaces whose boundaries are formed by walls, floors, and ceilings. This way of thinking also makes sense because spaces are what people move around in. This example illustrates that the basis of creative thinking is a shift from a traditional way of thinking to a new and unexpected way of thinking.
Now, compare that shift in thinking with the shift that occurs in the punch line of the following joke: A drunken man wandered into an alley and slumped down against a building. A few minutes later, a pig came along and sat down beside him. Another few minutes later, a well-dressed man walked by and remarked, "You can judge someone by the company he keeps." With that, the pig got up and left.
As this joke and the architectural insight illustrate, the basis of both humor and creative thinking is a sudden and unexpected shift in thinking. People who resist shifts in thinking that occur at the end of jokes may also tend to resist shifts in thinking that could lead to useful creative ideas.
In case you need more reasons to appreciate humor, here are two more:
- The goal of both humor and creative problem solving is the same: to make life more enjoyable.
- Laughter helps to clear the mind, and creative problem solving becomes easier when it's done with a clear mind.
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