Oblique Strategies

From this website, courtesy of Brian Eno and a bunch of other people:
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Accept advice


Work against your better judgement

Ask your body

Be dirty

Breathe more deeply

Courage!

Cut a vital connection

Decorate, decorate

Discard an axiom

Do something boring

Don't break the silence

Don't stress one thing more than another

Emphasise differences

Emphasise the flaws

Give the game away

Give way to your worst impulse

How would you have done it?

Is it finished?

Just carry on

Listen to the quiet voice

Look at the order in which you do things

Repetition is a form of change

Reverse

Simple subtraction

Tidy up

Turn it upside down

Use an old idea

Use filters

Water

What mistakes did you make last time?

What would your closest friend do?

What wouldn't you do?

Work at a different speed

You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas

Take away the elements in order of apparent non importance

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify/magnify them

Humanise something free of error

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

Don't be frightened to display your talents

Don't be frightened of clichés

Don't avoid what is easy

Distort time

Discover your formulas and abandon them

Disconnect from desire

Destroy the most important thing

Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor

Change nothing and continue consistently

Are there sections? Consider transitions

Remove a restriction

Abandon normal instructions

Which elements can be grouped?

What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

Trust in the you of now

Use an unacceptable colour

Cascades 

Emphasise repetitions

Fill every beat with something

Ghost echoes

Go slowly all the way round the outside

Infinitesimal gradations

Into the impossible

Mechanicalise something idiosyncratic

Use fewer words

What is the reality of the situation?

You can only make one dot at a time

Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of

What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving

Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events

Faced with a choice, do both

Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element

Do the washing up

Get your neck massaged
Put in earplugs

Spectrum analysis

Tape your mouth

Twist the spine

Be extravagant

Disciplined self-indulgence

Always first steps

Not building a wall but making a brick

It is simply a matter of work

The most easily forgotten thing is the most important

Move towards the unimportant

Idiot glee (?)

It is quite possible (after all)

Lost in useless territory

Revaluation (a warm feeling)

Always give yourself credit for having more than personality

Only a part, not the whole

Retrace your steps

Be less critical

Go to an extreme, come part way back

From nothing to more than nothing

Make it more sensual

Slow preparation..fast execution

Think - inside the work -outside the work

When is it for?

How would someone else do it?

Try faking it

What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?

Where is the edge?

Is the style right?

Use something nearby as a model

What is the simplest solution?

Gardening, not architecture

Make something implied more definite (reinforce, duplicate)
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I apologize for the length of this post. 

I made a small painting of one of my favorites of these today: It is a light orange background with light blue letters that spell: "Don't avoid / what is easy".  I used these clear rubber stamp letters that I bought and didn't end up using for a different project. 

If any of these strikes any of you as particularly helpful, I will make you a painting of it.  Just pick one and paste it into the comments and then... send me your address in a message on Facebook... and I will happily make you a painting of it.  You can even request what colors you'd like.

(Is me doing this a form of procrastination?  May be.  But.  Using art projects to procrastinate is like... the only acceptible form of procrastination, in my book.  As long as it doesn't get out of hand.  Like, I am not posting this on Facebook and offering to make paintings for all 200 of my friends on there.)