Blake Burris pointed me to Phil McKinney's podcast -- Tools and tricks to overcome creativity block.
Phil provides several techniques to subdue your conscious and spring creativity. He believes strongly in a visual approach and says that everyone has a different interpretation of pictures. Here's one of his methods:
With your dominate hand, for five to ten minutes draw any image or symbol that comes to mind. Then with your opposite hand perform the same. These symbols need not be related to the problem, just images that come to mind. When finished drawing, sit back, look at drawings and make word associations with the problem to the point where you raise the rafters of creativity.
Now, I've written about the hand-mind connection. Your right hand is connected to the left side of the brain, while the left hand is connected to the right side. By using both hands, you balance the brain and calm the storm of thoughts that are clouding the answer to your problem. And that's why I believe playing music is powerful. When playing guitar, for example, you use both hands at the same time.
There's also a great quote in the podcast, "The Best way to escape from a problem is to solve it."
Of course, this quote ties into lean development's thinking -- instead of keeping a list of software fixes, solve the error immediately. This way you're not managing a list, you're solving problems.
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