Creative problem solving: (Online) Oblique strategies by Brian Eno

Like a tarot deck but different. It was initially a device to assist painting projects. Especially under pressure.
Its a creative problem solving tool which allows you to consider a fresh perspective when things seem stale, predicable or unfruitful.

Something to 'shake up' the thinking, when we are being habitual and uninspired in our approach to situations.

Here is a site that allows you to pick a card. But you need to have adobe shock wave installed for it to work.

Brian eno is quoted here as saying:
" Oblique strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation - particularly in studios - tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you're in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that's going to yield the best results Of course, that often isn't the case - it's just the most obvious and - apparently - reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, "Don't forget that you could adopt *this* attitude," or "Don't forget you could adopt *that* attitude."

The first Oblique Strategy said "Honour thy error as a hidden intention." And, in fact, Peter's first Oblique Strategy - done quite independently and before either of us had become conscious that the other was doing that - was ...I think it was "Was it really a mistake?" which was, of course, much the same kind of message. Well, I collected about fifteen or twenty of these and then I put them onto cards. At the same time, Peter had been keeping a little book of messages to himself as regards painting, and he'd kept those in a notebook. We were both very surprised to find the other not only using a similar system but also many of the messages being absolutely overlapping, you know...there was a complete correspondence between the messages. So subsequently we decided to try to work out a way of making that available to other people, which we did; we published them as a pack of cards, and they're now used by quite a lot of different people, I think. "

You can buy the bunch of cards from amazon, but the online version is probably easier and less hassle.

Have a nice Sunday!