How Have You Used Vuja De to Support Your Creativity?

Most of us have been in a position where we feel as if “we’ve been here before”—even if we know we haven’t. Sometimes, we smell something or hear something, but we feel as if we’ve been here before. There’s a name for that: deja vu.

But sometimes, we feel as if this thing—that maybe we’ve seen many times before—is new. We’ve never seen this thing in exactly this way. Maybe we didn’t even notice it before. Not surprisingly, there’s a name for this too: vuja de.

Vuja de helps us take the normal, regular, or commonplace, and use our new eyes (or smells or sounds) to change our creativity.

If we allow ourselves, we can use vuja de to:

• Ask “why” questions, especially around our routines.
• Notice more details.
• See what’s missing.

In Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question, he explains an example using the image with this post. Glance up at the image, and then glance away. Now, without looking at the image, answer this question:

How many squares do you see?

There’s an easy answer: 16.

Now, what if I challenge you and say there are many more squares? How many do you now see?

There’s the enclosing square, which makes 17. Then, there are the two-by-two, and three-by-three squares.

So the “right” answer is 30.

But I think the “right” answer is any answer above 17. That’s because you realized you could break free of your constraints and use vuja de to see more squares. I’ll talk more about that lack of one “right” answer below.

So how can we use vuja de?

Ask “Why” Questions

As a consultant, I often need to ask “why” questions—but I don’t want to sound like a two-year-old. I use the context-free questions in When Do You Go Meta? In addition, I ask other questions that help us hear objective data that’s not focused on numbers:

• What do you see and hear now?
• What would you like to see and hear?
• What stories do you hear now?
• What stories do you want to hear?

There is a place for numbers, but if I start with people-focused questions, I’m more likely to notice even more details.

Notice More Details

Before my vertigo, I was quite capable of being an absent-minded person. Now that I can’t afford to be so oblivious, I notice many, many more details. Sometimes I feel the overload of too many details. (See What Filters Do You Use to Manage Sensory Overload?)

While our various mental models help us, we might need to jiggle ourselves to look through some of those filters. That’s when I use the image above of the squares, to remind myself to notice more details.

See What’s Missing

Vuja de is about how to sense in a new way. If we ask ourselves, “What’s missing?” we might see things differently. I can no longer look at the 4×4 image of a square and not see many more squares. Brainteasers can help us see things differently.

Stories might also help us see the world differently. That’s why I read “all” the words, by reading all genres, all the time.

Become Even More Creative with Vuja De

Before I started to write, I didn’t think I was creative. But writing helps me see the world differently. I can use my writing to probe the ordinary, to use vuja de and see the extraordinary.

You might not write, but I’m sure you do something that involves creation. Instead of living inside the constraints with deja vu, what would you have to do to use vuja de?

Vuja de allows us to move beyond the “One Right Answer” thinking, and create many more options. When I see more options, I tend to be more creative. I hope you do, too.

That’s the question this week: How have you used vuja de to support your creativity?