📖 Out Now · On Amazon 📖
Think Outside The Box.
What Box?
A Completely Unnecessary Guide to Questioning Everything
By W. Ingle
Yes, there's another one. No, nobody asked for it. We checked twice, and it turns out that was enough times. It's out anyway.
Nobody asked for it. Nobody is stopping it either.
The Premise, Such As It Is
People have been telling each other to think outside the box for years. It's said in meetings. It's printed on mugs. It's on the wall of at least one office you have been trapped in. And yet in all that time, not one person has stopped to ask the obvious question.
What box?
Nobody has seen it. Nobody can describe it. Nobody knows who built it, where it's kept, or why it apparently has an outside that somebody is currently occupying. It is, on any honest reading, a box that does not exist, being discussed by people who have never left it.
This book intends to get to the bottom of precisely none of that. What it contains instead is questions. An unreasonable number of them. New angles, different views, and a smiling donkey who has clearly worked something out and isn't telling us.
That's the whole thing. Same thinking, different views, a brighter you — or so the signpost on the cover claims, and the signpost has never lied to us before.
Nobody asked for this book. We went back through the emails twice. Same answer both times. We are choosing to treat that as a green light.
What You Actually Get
A fair question, given the circumstances. Here is the honest inventory.
Questions
A great many. Far more than is reasonable for a book of this size, or any size.
New angles
Genuinely new. Not the recycled ones you have already heard in a meeting this week.
A donkey
Smiling. Informed. Refusing to share what it knows. It has earned that.
A brighter you
As claimed on the cover. We are passing this on as received and accepting no liability.
No answers
Set your expectations here and the rest of it is a pleasant surprise.
A box
Unconfirmed. Reported by several readers. Never actually produced on request.
From the book · Page unknown
An Entirely Representative Extract
"'Think outside the box,' she said, with the confidence of somebody who had never once been asked to produce the box. I said nothing. I have learned that this is the correct response to roughly eighty per cent of everything."
This extract is either representative or invented. Both are consistent with the book.
Still Not Going To Ask For It?
Understood. We were told it was coming sooner or later, and then it turned out to be sooner, which surprised us more than anyone.
📕 Paperback · 📖 Kindle eBook · and whatever else Amazon decides to list.
Looking for the King, the Donkey and the goat called Keith? Those are over in the Wingle Universe, which is a different mess entirely.
Visit The Wingle UniverseQuestions We Were Never Asked
Answered anyway, in the spirit of the book.
Who asked for this book?+
Nobody. We went back through the emails twice to be certain and the answer was the same both times. Not you, not your neighbour, and certainly not the donkey. It was published anyway, which tells you everything you need to know about how decisions get made around here.
What is the box?+
Unclear. Nobody has seen it, nobody can describe it, and nobody knows who built it, where it's kept, or why it apparently has an outside that somebody is currently occupying. People have been advising each other to think outside it for years without anyone stopping to ask the obvious question. That question is the entire book.
Does it answer the question?+
No. It asks considerably more of them. That was always the plan.
Is this a self-help book?+
It is a self-help book in the sense that it has a cover, and the cover says helpful-sounding things. Beyond that, it would be misleading to promise anything. The signpost on the cover reads 'Same thinking, different views, a brighter you' — the signpost has never lied to us before.
Is this part of the Wingle Universe?+
It shares a publisher and an author, and possibly a donkey. It is not part of the Wingle series — there is no King, no red button, and no goat called Keith. Anyone claiming otherwise has not been paying attention, which is arguably the book's fault.
Where can I buy it?+
Amazon, right now. Which is sooner than we led everyone to believe, and we would like that noted rather than questioned.