I’m still not exactly sure how I would define an oblique strategy, but I do know that they can be most useful for getting me out of a rut. Originally developed by musician/producer Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt, these strategies were described by Eno 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.’”
In reality, they’re slightly mystifying statements that either confuse you or enlighten you. You used to have to by a deck of strategy cards, but now there’s an online version. I usually click through a couple of them before I find one that resonates with me at the time. For example, “From nothing to more than nothing,” got me typing a few days ago when I was sitting in my desk chair and melting in the Brooklyn heat.
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