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I'm always looking for new ways to push my thinking to solve problems or come up with new ideas. I recently stumbled across Roger von Oech's 'Whack Packs' and purchased the 'Creative Whack Pack' and the 'Innovative Whack Pack' from Amazon. I have always been fond of packs of cards. As a child I had numerous packs of 'Top Trumps' (anyone remember those?) and used to carry a few sets to school for playground battles (the Marvel character top trumps were particularly popular). However, I haven't purchased a pack of cards in years, so it was a nice experience to take the 'Whack Pack' cards out of their boxes and shuffle through them.

The cards are very glossy and are nicely printed with an insight and a question or action accompanied by often surreal, hand drawn illustrations on each card.The basic concept is simple. If you reach a stumbling block in your thinking, whether you're trying to figure out the solution to a creative problem, create something new or refine old ideas, you simply take a random card out of the pack, read the insight and find as many contextual links as possible to your particular thought process. However, there are several other excercises you can do with the cards that are suggested in the instructions. These range from using the cards in meetings of several people, each using a card to 'play' at certain points of the meeting, to brainstorming sessions and even a 'tarot' like reading scenario. These are just guidelines though, and the card sets have been designed to be used however you think works best for you

I had a quick play with them by asking a question about my business and picking a random card and although I didn't fully apply my thinking to it, I found the card really encouraged me to 'think outside the box' with regards to certain issues. I'm looking forward to using them properly.

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