Creativity

The other day, I was trying to think of some stuff for work, and I was at a complete block. Then I recalled an exercise I did in a training class, and the instructor told us to do this exercise anytime before a creative endeavor and our brains would be prepared to "think different" (please don't sue me, Apple).

The exercise is essentially comparing two items that are not normally associated with each other. The two items he mentioned at that time are a cat and a refrigerator. There were 60-70 people in the class, and altogether we came up with roughly 50 ways a cat and a refrigerator are alike. In redoing this exercise the other day, I could only come up with 20, among them

• They run
• can be fuzzy
• leave puddles on the floor
• like to be under things (refrig. under cabinets; cats under chair/couch/table/etc.)
• have an appendage extending from the rear
• have motors
• hum/purr
• both will be running and then just conk out
• can contain mice
• can contain milk
• come in a variety of colors
• can be finicky

I'll have to get my list and update it with the other things I wrote down but can't recall right now. I'll take suggestions...

I came up with a list of other things to compare (which was quite an exercise in and of itself). (Easy) a car and a plane; (not so easy) a cat and a plane; (hard) a cat and a piece of glass; a cat and a piece of carpet; (ludicrously hard) an orange and a piece of glass. I'll fill in these later (and take suggestions from the peanut gallery when I get around to actually thinking about these.