time required: 5+ minutes 

Shifting your perspective can lead to real creative engagement and discovery - that spark we all strive for. Take something you do one way, and try it a different way. Turn a sketch upside down. Watch a Wes Anderson movie with the sound off. Take a picture with your phone and zoom in one element until it is abstracted. Listen to Kate Schutt’s recording on turning it upside down (above) for inspiration.

Bonus: try a single line drawing upside down!

Disruption and shifting your perspective can be an impactful creative tool. In 1975, musician and artist Brian Eno and multimedia artist Peter Schmidt published Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.  This set of cards with prompts (above left) offers challenging constraints to help artists break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking .

Painter Georg Baselitz (above right) is known for painting upside down. He was kicked out of art school and struggled until he came up with this unique idea. Baselitz frequently stated that he turns the works upside down to "irritate the view". He believes that people pay closer attention when they are disturbed. While the paintings displayed upside down are representational in nature, the act of inverting them is considered a step toward abstraction.