From Boredom to Provocation: Lateral Thinking
This article explores the connection between boredom—which serves as a catalyst for open-mindedness—and Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking, which provides a method for channeling that openness.
A few weeks ago, I wrote here about why boredom helps us create better. The central idea was simple: when we stop filling every minute with stimulation, the mind begins to wander, and that’s when associations emerge that sequential logic would never have generated.
But boredom on its own is raw material, not a method. It leaves the door open; it doesn’t tell us what to do once we step inside. That’s where a discipline with more than fifty years of development comes in: Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking. I’ve been reading about this, and I’d like to bring the two ideas together, because I believe that together they form a relevant framework for how we can exercise our creativity.
Boredom and Creativity
The connection isn’t just anecdotal; there are studies that support it. Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, from the University of Central Lancashire, designed a two-round experiment.
In the first round, one group copied numbers from a phone book for fifteen minutes (a deliberately tedious task) and then had to come up with alternative uses for a pair of plastic cups. That group produced more and more original ideas than a control group that hadn’t done the preliminary task. In the second round, they sought to isolate the variable: they compared those who copied the numbers with those who simply read them aloud, without writing anything down. The group that only read—that is, the even more passive task—came out on top. The authors’ interpretation is that the more passive and mechanical the activity, the more freedom the mind has to generate associative thinking.
A subsequent study by Karen Gasper and Brianna Middlewood of Penn State adds an interesting nuance: they compared the creative performance of bored people against that of relaxed people and euphoric people. The bored group came out on top. In a categorization test (for example, deciding whether a camel counts as a “vehicle”), those who were bored accepted broader and less obvious categories. Boredom seems to expand the scope of what we consider related—which is exactly the mechanism that underpins any creative leap.
So far, that’s what science tells us. The problem is that none of these studies tells us what to do with that open-mindedness once we’ve achieved it. That’s where lateral thinking comes in.
Logical Thinking and Lateral Thinking
De Bono starts from a basic assumption: the mind tends to fixate on patterns because patterns are efficient; solving a known problem using a known path conserves cognitive energy. The cost of that efficiency is that patterns also block innovation, because any new situation is processed by forcing it into an old framework. Logical thinking (or vertical thinking, in De Bono’s terminology) proceeds step by step within those frameworks: it defines, analyzes, and concludes. Lateral thinking does not seek to replace it; rather, it seeks to deliberately interrupt it to generate material that logical thinking can later evaluate and put into practice.
That sequence matters: first logic to frame the problem, then deliberate provocation to break out of the framework, then logic again to filter out what works. Without the first logical step, provocation is just noise. Without the second logical step, provocation remains a mere idea and never becomes a solution.
Three Provocation Techniques and Concrete Examples
De Bono documented several techniques for forcing this break from the pattern. These three are the ones I find easiest to apply to a real-world problem:
Direct provocation. You make a deliberately absurd statement about the problem—without filtering for feasibility—and record the associations it triggers. If the problem is “our team is late for meetings,” the provocation could be “let’s get rid of the clocks in the office.” The idea itself is impractical, but it can lead to useful questions: Are they late because of the clock, or because of how we structure the agenda? What would happen if meetings started automatically without a courtesy wait?
Reversal. The cause-and-effect relationship—or the very objective of the problem—is reversed. Instead of asking, “How do we get users to return to our product?” the reversal asks, “How do we ensure they never come back?” Listing the ways to drive someone away often reveals with surgical precision the real friction points we’re currently creating without realizing it.
Exaggeration or minimization. One aspect of the problem is taken to a ridiculous extreme so that what went unnoticed at its normal scale becomes visible. If the problem is “there are too many interruptions in the team,” exaggerating it would mean imposing absolute silence and communication solely in writing for a week. This is likely to clearly reveal whether the problem is the volume of interruptions or a lack of agreement on when to interrupt.
None of the three techniques aims to produce a fully formed, actionable idea the moment they’re applied. They aim to break the usual pattern. The “down-to-earth” idea emerges later, when logical thinking returns to assess which parts of what was generated have real value.
A practical framework for combining both approaches
If we combine the evidence on boredom with De Bono’s method, we’re left with a fairly concrete four-step process:
Frame the problem logically. Define it in a clear, unambiguous sentence before engaging in any creative work.
Create a low-stimulation space. Set aside a block of time without screens, without podcasts, and without multitasking. This is deliberately passive time, following the logic of Mann and Cadman’s experiment.
Apply a provocation technique to the problem defined in step 1. Choose a single technique per session (direct provocation, inversion, or exaggeration) and jot down everything that comes to mind without filtering.
Return to the logic to evaluate. Review what was generated and keep only what, once grounded, actually solves a real aspect of the original problem.
Without this fourth step, boredom remains a kind of amusing rambling. Provocation without steps one and two remains a somewhat forced exercise, lacking the open-mindedness that makes it fruitful. It is the combination of both that produces something interesting.
Conclusion
As I mentioned in my previous post, creativity isn’t a personality trait reserved for those who “are creative”; it’s a process with clear mechanisms: one that opens things up (boredom, the mind on autopilot) and one that structures that openness into something with direction (deliberate provocation).
Working both together—rather than relying solely on spontaneous inspiration—is what makes the practice repeatable rather than accidental, and allows us to intentionally apply it to areas that require these different perspectives.
See you next time! P.S.: If you’re interested in leadership, innovation, technology, and how to empower multicultural teams, I invite you to follow me on Substack. Subscribe here to instantly receive every new post in this series. 🚀🌍