I was learning Scratch. It is a platform for ten-year-old kids, an introduction to programming, in an interactive way. I am multiple times older than ten, so I jumped into it. Indeed, within an hour I tinkered my first routine which worked.

Scratch is like Lego: you can compile interactive simulations and computer games from building blocks. You don’t have to write codes, just drag the right elements into the stage and weld them in the right order. It will run. Or not, in my case.

The platform is so simple that I didn’t even find detailed tutorials. I used the IF controller. If my apple is green, it needs sunshine. If red, pluck it. I defined a variable, dragged the IF panel and tried to type the name of the variable (apple) in many ways. It didn’t work. All the other parts of the routine worked, the IF was stubborn. So was I. I tried to enter the name of the variable over and over. I looked up tutorials, manuals, no success.

My burning question was: What to type into the IF command?

Next day I showed it to my mathematician friend. He’d never heard about Scratch before. He looked at the patterns and colours and said, "maybe you don’t have to type anything. Just drag your variable into the box".

I banged my head against the wall. It was so obvious, I was blind. I had the wrong question.

Thinking out of the box starts with analysing the question. Is it the right question? Instead of asking WHAT to type, I should have asked: Do I have to type anything?

We often assume conditions that don’t exist, making the problem more difficult to solve. The origin of the phrase  “Think out of the box” is a classical example for that. The instruction goes like this: Connect all the dots with four straight lines, without lifting the pencil. Nobody tells you that you are not allowed to leave the area of the dots, or you can’t draw a line twice. You just don’t do it, you are in a box, based on a false assumption.

My box was the assumption that I could only type. With analytical thinking I could have overcome it.

Did you ever have a similar experience?