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January 17, 2005

Superglue and poltergeists

Personal observations are great in providing insights into the art of creative thinking, and I love to use these stories to impart these insights, like this earlier one.

7am Friday morning. Went to bed late thanks to my really bad habit of watching TV. My housemate calls me from downstairs, saying that the bathroom door is locked, and no-one's inside. Freaky. Those poltergeists again.

So I stumble downstairs and investigate. Sure enough, the door is closed, turning the doorknob yields a locked door. But how?? The wind slammed the door shut during the night, that's for sure. So I surmise that during the slam, the tumbler in the lock must have flipped over causing it to lock, somehow. And the key is on the inside, and the windows have really effective burglar-bars installed, like any self-respecting house in SA should.

Out come screwdrivers, long-nose pliars and later, satay sticks and superglue. Yes, satay sticks. The latter 'tools' were for me to try retrieve the key through the keyhole so that I could grip it with the pliars, turn it to unlock. Royally screwed that one up when I knocked the key out accidently. And no, there's no gap under the door to slide the key under.

Now I've always conditioned myself that there is ALWAYS a solution to some problem, it just requires that one be asking the right questions.

I then get another key to see if it by some fluke it works.

Key almost fits..but it also indicates to me that the door isn't locked!! Huh?

Now it dawns on me. The shaft inside the doorknob must've been forced back post-slam. So the doorknob is turning on itself, but not being attached to anything, it has no effect.

Solution is now easy - take off doorknob, insert another object wide enough to turn door latch, and bingo.

I thought about this afterwards as to how valuable this experience was for me in creative thinking. The major assumption that I was working on was that the door was locked because the doorknob had no effect. This caused my solution hunting be driven by the wrong questions: how to unlock the door. It should have been, how do I open the door: check all facts about impediments to that task.

Posted by sdehaast at January 17, 2005 2:20 PM Posted to food for thought