I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Master the basics before breaking rules

We live in a culture obsessed with disruption and innovation—everyone wants to think outside the box. But Pratchett's quip cuts to something uncomfortable: most of us haven't mastered the basics of clear thinking yet. We jump to rebel ideas without understanding the fundamentals. It's like wanting to paint like Picasso before learning to draw a straight line.

The real insight here isn't that creative thinking is bad. It's that creativity without foundation is just noise. Before you can usefully break the rules, you need to understand what they are and why they exist. In your own life, this might mean actually reading the instruction manual before declaring it useless, or thinking deeply about a problem before dismissing the conventional solution as boring.

What makes this sting a little is recognizing it in ourselves. How many of our "original" ideas are actually half-understood reactions against something we didn't bother to fully examine? The box isn't the enemy—sloppy thinking is. Pratchett is really saying: get your mind in order first, and the outside-the-box stuff will actually mean something.