Thinking Inside the Box

Clichés fill conference rooms of businesses across America. Reinventing the wheel (which has been done a number of times – and in good ways), throwing under the bus (is it okay to throw them over it?), a win win situation (and the generally less popular lose lose situation – ala a major layoff), ramping up (which has confused down ramps for decades), core competencies (usually said by people without any – and often rather large cores to boot),  pushing the envelope (this should really become “forwarding the email”), hitting the ground running (which has scared the bejesus out of running ground for years), team player (generally stated by people who hate teams) and, of course, “thinking outside the box” are all staples parried about in lieu of the painful job of thinking and articulating a cogent thought.  

It appears thinking outside the box, beyond being the most overused and annoying cliché in history – really symptomatic of a person so stuck inside the box they could never even find their way out if given several years and simple direction – is poor advice for children. For the past 75 years, all expectant mothers in Finland are given a box: containing baby clothes, sheet, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products, toys, diapers and a small mattress (which makes it a potential bed -- BBC). At the time the program was started, Finland had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the industrial world. Today it has one of the lowest while America has the highest among OECD countries. It appears thinking inside the box actually is a good idea, as is sleeping inside the box.

So my public service announcement for the day is to seriously consider whether you want to propagate these tired clichés any longer, not only for the damage it is doing to our collective IQ, but given the potentially perilous cost to children in Finland.