Welcome to the Escapism tutorial

How to use the Escapism technique

With Escapism you can propose the wildest, most outrageous and preposterous things you can imagine. You use true escapism where there are no morals, rules, etiquette, laws or standards. You escape the physical limitations of the world to see what your ultimate solution would be. You should not limit yourself by anything except your own imagination, and even this you should push.

Your mission in this technique is to write down the wildest, most ridiculous, stupid, wacky ideas you can come up with to solve the probortunity. They do not have to be practical, possible or even sensible.

Once you have done this, and only when you have finished, should you look back at the ideas you have generated. Then you should look for ways in which all or part of these ideas could be made practical. Think of the benefits you could gain by using the idea and work out how you can achieve the same thing in reality. How could you modify the suggested solution to make it work? How could you get the same effect? What changes in the world would you need to make the idea possible and how can you make those changes happen?

Example of using Escapism:

Stimulus: Use bananas

Bridging Idea: Banana skins are very slippery and hard to hold (in theory).

Potential solution: Make a door lock that rotates freely except with a special holding device unique to each door. Only by using a special device can you unlock the door.

Bridging Idea: Bananas shoot out of their skins when you squeeze them too hard.

Potential solution: Make a burglar alarm which shoots a sign up and down on top of the roof to attract attention. You could even make it say which side of the house is being burgled so that people walking in front of the house know that the house has been broken into from the back where they cannot see it.

Stimulus: Have a crossbow which shoots intruders in the head when they come through the front door.

Bridging idea: Have something at the front door which stops them when they enter.

Potential solution: Have an electronic camera which takes photos of everyone that enters the house and either stores it on a disk in the loft or sends all photos directly to the police (who only look at them as necessary).

 

Stimulus: Windows and doors which lock themselves as burglars approach.

Potential solution: Have windows which sense people approaching and close and lock themselves. They could be unaffected by people moving inside the house.

Please try this technique for yourself and you will certainly improve at coming up with new ideas.

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