We all get mental blocks. We need to get unblocked. The way to get unblocked is to lose our inhibitions and stop worrying about being right.

The comedian John Cleese puts it rather more eloquently, ‘High creativity is responding to situations without critical thought’.

If you are in deadlock here are a couple of tricks you might try.

- Do the opposite of what the solution requires.

Look out of the window and whatever catches your eye, a bird, a television aerial, an old man on crutches or whatever, make that the solution to your problem.

When selling our ideas, we tend to overpromise in our enthusiasm for our creation. In our vision of how we hope it will be, we leave no room for failure. The result will probably be disappointing. Not disastrous, but a little less than expected.