Stage 9. CONGRUENCE - from OR to AND

From Sao Bartolomeu de Messines to Silves - 29 km

• Another brainstorming technique that I also use to identify new ideas is to combine things that are a priori not compatible.

• We often have a tendency to think in a binary or discrete mode: work or vacation, pizza or ice cream, travel or stay at home, watch NFL or crochet… Yet reality offers a juxtaposition and continuum of possibilities.

• Modifying our thinking from or to and may lead us to ideas like creating ice cream with a pizza flavor or a pizza with ice cream on top, or a service offering older people a live virtual tour of places they have visited in their youth and would like to reminisce again or to create a social media channel about NFL players doing crochet, wouldn’t that be unusual?

• Not all ideas will be workable but moving from or to and in your favorite sectors will increase the possibility of breaking paradigms and coming up with very original ideas.

• Examples abound. Who decided to add pineapple to pizza? Socks were once only sold in blue, black, or brown. Who broke the rules and thought about socks and color? The NFL is the antithesis of a choir, but did you see the NFL Players Choir making it to the top 5 acts of America’s Got Talent in the 2022 season?

What are two antagonistic areas of interest that you could combine?

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TRAVEL UPDATE - STAGE 9

Distance: 29.9 km

Cumulative Elevation: 1,369 m

Time: 6.5 hours

Weather: Cloudy & rainy