If asked whether it is better to have more knowledge of a subject than less, most people's natural inclination would be to say more. It's why we have the phrase “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. The implication being, with a little knowledge you can be misled into thinking you're an expert on a subject.

But knowledge is often just other people's ideas and is often seen as set in stone. If you want to look at something in a fresh way you need to break away from existing ideas on a subject.

I think that's why Einstein tweaked it to: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”

It's no surprise then that Einstein himself had what was called his “miracle year” (or his miracle “three and a half months” to be more precise), when he was just twenty-six. In that time, he wrote three papers, one of which won him the Nobel prize, one that confirmed beyond doubt the existence and size of atoms, and another that introduced the mind, space and time-bending concept of special relativity.

Although he took a teaching diploma at Zurich Polytechnic, he never went to university and so was not influenced by the ideas and theories of “learned” professors. At the time he was working in the patent office in Bern and was doing science on the side.

Once we have a certain amount of knowledge on a subject we can start to suffer from “functional fixedness” or “stuck in a rut” syndrome. It basically means that once we see something in a certain light or used for a certain purpose, it's very hard to see it in a different way.

A good example of breaking out of functional fixedness is Harry Beck's London Underground map. Until 1933, all the Underground maps had been geographically correct.

But that was all about to change. While working as an electrical engineering draftsman at the London Underground Signals Office, Harry Beck came up with a revolutionary design that disobeyed all conventional mapping rules. It was initially rejected by the London Transport publicity office for being too radical, but was given a small trial and was taken up after the public fell in love with it.

As Beck himself said, “If you're going underground, why do you need to bother about geography?”

Undoubtedly influenced by electrical circuit boards, he wasn't constrained by the “knowledge” that maps have to be geographically correct.

The term “functional fixedness” was coined by Karl Duncker and relates to a mental block against using an object in a new way.

He demonstrated this with his “candle problem”. He gave the participants a candle, a box of drawing pins, and a book of matches, and asked them to attach the candle to the wall so that it did not drip wax onto the table below.

Duncker found that participants tried to attach the candle directly to the wall with the tacks, or glue it to the wall by melting it. Very few of them thought of using the inside of the box as a candleholder and pinning this to the wall.

The participants were “fixated” on the box's normal function of holding drawing pins and couldn't imagine it as a candleholder. Forget thinking outside the box, they couldn't even think of it as a box! Interestingly, when the participants were presented with an empty drawing pin box, they were twice as likely to solve the problem.

Of course, functional fixedness doesn't just relate to objects. It can affect concepts and services as well.

I was running a workshop for a large multinational company, which wanted to come up with solutions to how its departments in America and England could interact better given the time difference. The workshop was in London but there was a mix of people from the English and American offices.

Everyone thought about the problem for a bit and then stuck their ideas on the wall. As everyone looked over the ideas, I noticed there was one in particular that was making everyone laugh.

I went over and had a look and it simply said, “The Americans should get up really early.” When I asked which ideas people thought had potential no one mentioned this one. It was seen a joke. I'm sure even the person who wrote it didn't expect it to be considered seriously.

They were all so engrained in the belief that a standard office workday is 9 to 5, that they didn't even consider it a viable option. But imagine if the Americans started at 6:00 a.m. If you take out the hour allocated for lunch, they could actually finish at 1:00 p.m. every day and have the afternoon off. Suddenly it's not a joke any more but has become quite an attractive option.

We're so set in thinking of things in a certain way. It's why, when a simple new idea comes along you often hear, “That's so obvious; why hasn't anyone thought of that before?” They haven't thought of it before because everyone is so fixed in their thinking.

A good example of this is the upside-down ketchup bottle. Why did it take so long to invent? I think it's just because we're fixed into this view that the bottle top should always be at the top. The fact that the lid is also called a “top” doesn't help either. It's an unconscious double whammy. Functional fixedness with a side order of cognitive bias.

So what's the answer? Well, first and foremost, to create more neural pathways in your brain. When you've got a problem and you've got a choice of four different paths to take instead of one, you're far more likely to go somewhere new with it.

To Think Different, Do Different

What's interesting is that doing anything new will help you break out of functionally fixed thinking.

It's not the relevance that matters; it's the newness.

Dutch psychologist Dr Simone Ritter from Radboud University Nijmegen wanted to prove this so she devised two tests.

In the first test, participants put on virtual reality headsets and took a three-minute stroll through a virtual version of the university cafeteria where illogical things happened. For instance, when participants walked up to a suitcase standing on a table, the size of the suitcase decreased, but as they walked away, it increased.

She also created another test in the real cafeteria. A classic Dutch breakfast believe it or not, is bread and butter with chocolate sprinkles on top. As you'd expect, the standard way to prepare it is to butter the bread and then sprinkle on the chocolate.

But what Dr Ritter did was to get the participants to put the chocolate sprinkles on a plate and then place the buttered bread, butter side down onto the sprinkles. They still ended up with bread and butter with chocolate sprinkles; it's just that the method they used to get there was very unorthodox.

After doing both tests, the participants were given classic creativity tests like: How many different uses can you think of for a household brick? It was found that their levels of creativity had risen by as much as 15%.

What they also found was it worked because it was an active experience. When people were shown a film of the strange things that happened in the virtual cafe there was no increase in their levels of creativity. They needed to actually experience it for themselves for it to make a difference.

It's all about seeking out that little unconscious jolt of surprise that a new perspective can give you.

There are many ways to get this change of perspective jolt from experiencing something everyday in a different way.

An interesting example of this is from New Yorker Alexandra Horowitz's book, On Looking. She went on eleven walks around her block with a different companion each time.

She wanted to see this very familiar walk which she did every day, through different eyes. Each one transformed the familiar surroundings and helped her see it in a fresh and interesting new way.

A sound engineer transformed the urban noise into the characteristic, flavourful clatter of the city. Each sound felt invited, a pleasure. A typographer helped her to stop reading signs and look at them instead. The linguistic part of her brain rested and the shape-identifying part hummed with activity. Through a geologist's eyes, the city suddenly became not a sterile “man-made” object but a thriving ecosystem of living and once-living landscape.

By changing your focus the ordinary can become extraordinary again.

But don't feel you have to wait till you get outside the office. Dr Ritter says, “Start a brainstorming session with something unexpected and you'll find that it is easier for participants to think outside the box.”

If you want your neurons to make new connections, you need to connect with the world in a new way.