Every organization, employee and his grandmother’s cat is familiar with this trite cliché—think outside the box.

It’s one of those popular expressions that gets thrown around too often because it’s easy to say, and the person saying it mysteriously gets elevated to a sacerdotal status. A person can demonstrate instant superiority just by using the expression, think outside the box.

Since box type thinking has garnered loads of bad press (sorry box thinking!) I’d like to explain some instances in which box thinking and not out of box thinking, can be quite useful and beneficial.

So let’s get started. First, what is box thinking?

In its literal form, if you engaged in box thinking you’d be sitting inside a cardboard box and mulling about stuff. Inside this box, you don’t have access to any other thoughts or ideas, except the ones that gnaw at you within the four walls of the box.

What does that mean?

Metaphorically, it means if you’re trying to solve a problem, your thoughts will arise from a set of rigid rules or preconceived ideas. Box type thinking in its dangerous form leads to these heavy sounding words—prejudice, rigidity and dogmatism. Why? Because when you’re thinking box type thoughts, you’re not open to other possibilities and alternative approaches to getting a problem solved or exploring a topic. Your mind is so closed you can’t even bear another person’s opinion or point of view.

But, like I promised earlier, below are instances in which box type thinking can be actually be useful.

1. Box thinking is useful to get repetitive work done quickly. For example, say your company uses SFTP(Secure File Transfer Protocol) to enable secure file sharing between your company and its agency partner, and one of your work responsibilities is to do a manual copy over of the files coming in from an external source to an internal one. To get the work done as quickly as possible on your first day at work, you will rely on box-type thinking, i.e. how was this process handled by those employees who came before you? If the solution has always been to double click on the external source folder, selecting all the files in that folder(CTRL+A), and then copying (CTRL+C) before pasting (CTRL+V) the files into the internal source, this is what needs to be done to get the job done. Even if you want to automate this process on your first day at work, you would still need to have at least a vague idea of what the manual process looks like. Your mind needs to be able to look for repetitive patterns to come up with a better out of box solution and this is where box-type thinking comes in handy. Think inside the box to think outside the box. Copy the files over manually (box thinking) and then after understanding the labor intensive process, write a batch script to automate it(out of box thinking). However, if for the rest of your days at work, if you’d rather copy files manually than automate the process, you’d be slowly working your way up to a hell better known as boredom.

2. Box type thinking can also be used to cultivate a good habit. Like exercising. Let’s say you want to get into shape in three weeks. The fastest approach would be to use some tried-and-tested out weight loss tips to see definite results. One box type thinking approach to help get into shape quickly is to monitor your food intake. There are, of course, many out of box weight loss methods some brave souls have tried out. Remember the guy who ate everything from Big Macs to Sundaes on the McDonalds menu for 30 days, and still lost several pounds? He used an unconventional and out-of-box thinking approach to lose weight. So, would you rather eat twelve cupcakes and see if that does the trick for you or use box type thinking and monitor your food intake? (I’d rather eat the cupcakes but I’m not looking to lose weight so I much prefer my out-of-box thinking and cupcakes, thank you very much.)

As you can see above, there are instances in which box type thinking is very useful. Without box type thinking, you can get lost in a world of endless possibilities. Box type thinking believe it or not, helps to narrow down your focus and rapidly achieve your set goals within a short period of time.

So, after reading about where box thinking is useful, have your feelings toward it softened?

The next time you hear someone say 'think outside the box', remember to not hate the box type thinking at the other end of the spectrum because not only does it have advantages but without that, the other wouldn’t exist!

Thanks for reading and do tell me in the comments below if you can think of any useful box type thinking examples! (Don’t forget to think inside the box. 😊)