You read the title right. It’s another of my contrarian approaches to life. Pretty much every week, you’ll hear someone extolling the virtues of thinking outside the box. The idea is to think outside your normal way of thinking, taking a risk, if you will. I even extolled the virtues of different thinking in my post Revolutionary Thinking just over a week ago.

Don’t worry, I’m not turning my back on the idea of thinking outside the box. But as in so many other areas of my life, I can see both sides of the coin. Maybe it’s something that I learned at an early age. Maybe it’s ingrained in my genes. I don’t really know where it comes from, but I can see both sides of an argument so often that it does make me wonder when other people can’t.

Since I’m assuming you’re familiar with the concept of thinking outside the box, I’m not going to talk about what that means. But I’m pretty sure most of you won’t really have considered thinking inside the box.

What do I mean by thinking inside the box?

I mean thinking and acting within the constraints that exist. Using every bit of what you have, but not having to change vantage points. Not adding anything to your repertoire. Using the skills that you are already familiar with.

You may have to take those skills or objects or whatever and put them together in new ways, but you don’t have to do anything radical at all.

The best example that I can think of comes from the movie Apollo 13. In the real-life scenario  the movie is based on, the astronauts faced a situation where the carbon-dioxide scrubber in one part of the spacecraft could not use the filters from the other part of the ship. Without the carbon-dioxide scrubbers, the crew was going to be faced with unbreathable air.

In one memorable scene, the flight engineers surround a table when a box of parts is tossed onto it. They are told “this is everything that the astronauts have”, and the engineers must come up with a way to create a new air filter.

This is a perfect example of thinking inside the box. There is nothing else that can be used. The components for the solution are fixed. The only thing that can be applied besides the parts is the ingenuity that the team can apply to the problem at hand.

Far too often, I find myself trying to “think outside the box” to solve my problems. I’m always looking for that one extra thing. That special way of looking at the problem. The additional item that I don’t have that will give me the most elegant solution. And I find myself wasting time over wishing for, even looking for what’s missing.

And so many times, a perfectly good solution is well within my grasp with nothing more than the tools that I already have nearby, just waiting to be used.

As I’ve become more comfortable with the concept of thinking inside the box, I’ve also had to become more comfortable with the realization that sometimes a job just needs to be done. Sure, there are better ways to solve some problems. Sometimes there are really elegant ways to fix them. But if I have to go too far outside the box, I often find myself spending more time, energy, and effort than what is really warranted by the problem. I’m such a darned perfectionist that I always want to strive for the perfect solution. But sometimes that’s just overkill.

So the next time you run into a problem that you’re really stuck on, try thinking inside the box. Look around at the tools, skills, and elements that you already have within your grasp and see if you can solve the problem inside the box. I know I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been able to accomplish this way!