Oblique Strategies

Abandon desire
Abandon normal instructions
Accept advice
Adding on
A line has two sides
Always the first steps
Ask people to work against their better judgement
Ask your body
Be dirty
Be extravagant
Be less critical
Breathe more deeply
Bridges -build -burn
Change ambiguities to specifics
Change nothing and continue consistently
Change specifics to ambiguities
Consider transitions
Courage!
Cut a vital connection
Decorate, decorate
Destroy nothing; Destroy the most important thing
Discard an axiom
Disciplined self-indulgence
Discover your formulas and abandon them
Display your talent
Distort time
Do nothing for as long as possible
Don't avoid what is easy
Don't break the silence
Don't stress one thing more than another
Do something boring
Do something sudden, destructive and unpredictable
Do the last thing first
Do the words need changing?
Emphasize differences
Emphasize the flaws
Faced with a choice, do both (from Dieter Rot)
Find a safe part and use it as an anchor
Give the game away
Give way to your worst impulse
Go outside. Shut the door.
Go to an extreme, come part way back
How would someone else do it?
How would you have done it?
In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
Is it finished?
Is something missing?
Is the style right?
It is simply a matter or work
Just carry on
Listen to the quiet voice
Look at the order in which you do things
Magnify the most difficult details
Make it more sensual
Make what's perfect more human
Move towards the unimportant
Not building a wall; making a brick
Once the search has begun, something will be found
Only a part, not the whole
Only one element of each kind
Openly resist change
Pae White's non-blank graphic metacard
Question the heroic
Remember quiet evenings
Remove a restriction
Repetition is a form of change
Retrace your steps
Reverse
Simple Subtraction
Slow preparation, fast execution
State the problem as clearly as possible
Take a break
Take away the important parts
The inconsistency principle
The most easily forgotten thing is the most important
Think - inside the work -outside the work
Tidy up
Try faking it (from Stewart Brand)
Turn it upside down
Use an old idea
Use cliches
Use filters
Use something nearby as a model
Use 'unqualified' people
Use your own ideas
Voice your suspicions
Water
What context would look right?
What is the simplest solution?
What mistakes did you make last time?
What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?
What were you really thinking about just now?
What wouldn't you do?
What would your closest friend do?
When is it for?
Where is the edge?
Which parts can be grouped?
Work at a different speed
Would anyone want it?
Your mistake was a hidden intention
Oblique Strategies © 1975-2001 Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt