Have you ever been woken up by the fact that you have missed opportunities only because you have made false assumptions about how things are? Assumptions are ideas or models we create in our head for explaining why some things are the way they are, or why some things work the way the work. These assumptions are usually based on what we have actually seen happening. The more we gain experience of something, the more we create assumptions regarding it.
The assumptions we make, serve us in our everyday life – they help us making analysis and decisions faster. Too often, however, assumptions limit our thinking seriously when we need to come up with new ideas! We do not even notice how we start assuming things when we start generating new ideas. Therefore it is very difficult to recognize our assumption.
While trying to generate new ideas in order to solve problems, one good way of liberating ourselves from the assumptions we have, is to list all our assumptions on paper regarding the topic. Then we need to consciously start thinking what would it mean, if some, or all, of these assumptions were false. Doing this will lead us thinking of the problem from completely new aspects, which may just be needed for coming up with a new solution! This method is called assumption busting.
When have you busted your assumptions the last time?
