I was never good at staying in the lane. My mind constantly draws connections that are simply not foreseen within the lane. Theology and geopolitics. Music and spirituality. Austrian narrowness and global thinking. This was often read as unreliability. As if “staying focused” were a synonym for “seeing less far.”
I grew up in a conservative culture. Austria maintains its forms. That has its value — continuity, depth, rootedness. But it also costs something: whoever thinks laterally pays for it. With isolation. With the feeling of never quite belonging.
Then there is the bureaucracy. Strict laws, constraining regulations, over-bureaucratisation — all of this trains conformity. The official channel as a way of life. Whoever submits, gets through. Whoever asks why, wastes time. But this very system also produces its opposite: people who at some point stop asking whether they are allowed — and start asking whether there is a better way.
From pressure, rebels emerge. And from rebels — when they do not grow bitter — come people who see connections that others do not see.
And often it is the sensitive person who pays the most. They do not want to hurt. And precisely because of that, they swallow. But whoever never sets boundaries remains merely polite — not loving. The lateral thinking within them then goes unused.
What Is Happening Now
AI is taking over at great speed what used to count as work: specialisation, execution, repetition. What remains is reading context, venturing interpretations, drawing cross-connections. Putting knowledge into relationship — that is something machines cannot yet do.
This is a structural shift. Whoever sits deep in a single silo is increasingly being replaced. What is in demand is whoever makes the silos talk to each other.
The Other Side
This is not an easy existence. Lateral thinking has its price. You do not fit in any drawer. You constantly explain yourself. And you doubt yourself — whether you really see connections, or whether you are simply too restless to stay with one thing.
The rebel identity can become vain. It can tip into pure contradiction, without its own substance. The shadow of the lateral thinker is self-elevation — the feeling that the others simply do not see it. That is sometimes true. Knowing one’s own shadow is the precondition for lateral thinking being genuinely worthwhile.
Lateral thinking as a conscious practice — with all that it costs and gives. Rebel as an identity is not enough for that.
What Sustains It
What makes the lateral thinking lasting is foundation. Whoever knows that something holds — God, the higher, the original source, whatever one calls it — has to control less. Fear loses its bite. The courage to think laterally then comes from trust in something — and that is a different drive than rebellion against something.
That is the difference between someone who provokes from a wound, and someone who shows new connections from strength. Healed wounds allow deeper sight. Unhealed ones trigger.
What This Means for Work
The job of the future belongs to whoever draws simultaneously from different worlds — and makes something from it that could not have arisen in any of the individual worlds alone. That requires curiosity, tolerance for incompleteness, and the willingness to sometimes be wrong and to admit it.
That is learnable. But it begins with stopping to treat one’s own lateral-headedness as a flaw.
Why I Write This Here
This blog is a place where I do exactly that: crossing borders — geographically, thematically, ideologically. Sometimes I fail at it. Sometimes things emerge that I would never have thought alone. I invite you to think along — because the questions get bigger when one asks them together.
Further reading: For those who want to read more about the personal path behind this — how the sensitive person learns to remain authentic without bending: My Path to the Authentic Self
By René Jochum and Claude (Anthropic). License: CC-BY-4.0.