Car Talk was a show on National Public Radio for 35 years.
People would call Tom and Ray Magliozzi - Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers - because their transmission was making a strange noise, their car wouldn't start when it rained, or their mechanic had just told them they needed a $2,000 repair and they wanted to know if he was full of crap.
And the brothers would try to figure it out. Sort of. Because it usually didn't take very long before the conversation wandered as far away from the car as they could get.
They'd start asking about the caller's spouse. Or their job. Or why they bought the car in the first place.
Tom and Ray would eventually get around to trying to solve the problem, and often, neither of them really knew the answer. They would proudly announce that they were proceeding "unencumbered by the thought process."
That meant that anything was fair game. What if we tried this? What if we turned that upside down? What if we just hit it with a hammer?
Most of those ideas didn't stand a chance at working. And that was okay.
Which seems like a strange way of thinking when your first principle is "Think Like MacGyver."
Hear me out.
All too often, we encounter a problem and start looking for answers. Then, almost immediately, we start eliminating possibilities.
That's too expensive. That's insane. People will think that's stupid.
The thing is... there isn't always a straight line between the problem and the solution. Sometimes you have to wander around a little before you find something that works.
So maybe every once in a while, mix a little Tom and Ray into your MacGyver, and allow yourself to be completely, gloriously, and unapologetically... "Unencumbered by the thought process."