Shortcut: 4 Ways to Come Up With Good Ideas
How do you come up with groundbreaking ideas? Though it can seem like some people are just born creative, many authors argue creativity is a skill that can be learned. In this article, we’ll review four techniques experts say can bring you to an “aha” moment.
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Inventing a Better Mousetrap
Whether you’re trying to think of a product upgrade, write the next great novel, or devise a groundbreaking marketing tactic, there are endless situations that require great ideas. But generating ideas—good ones—is hard, especially when you’re on the spot. You can increase your odds of success, though, by getting in the right mindset and then immersing yourself in a world of ideas—good ones, bad ones, and other peoples’.
1: Stop Focusing
In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey writes that to be successful, you have to alternate between two states of mind: hyperfocus and scatterfocus. Hyperfocusing makes you productive, but scatterfocusing allows for idea generation. When you scatterfocus, you allow your mind to wander so that your brain has the freedom to connect disparate pieces of knowledge.
One effective method of scatterfocusing is to do a simple task that doesn’t require a lot of working memory—go for a walk, knit a scarf, or weed your garden, for example. Choose something that elevates your mood, as happiness increases your working memory capacity so your mind can access more thoughts as it wanders. And, keep a notebook handy to write down the thoughts, connections, and ideas that occur to you.
2. Come Up With Bad Ideas
In Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss argues that if you want to generate good ideas, you have to generate a lot of bad ideas first. It doesn’t matter how silly they are—the more you think of ideas, the more you exercise your “idea muscle,” and the more likely you are to come up with something that answers your need.
To strengthen your “idea muscle,” get in the habit of generating ideas regularly—not just when you need to think of specific solutions. For example, challenge yourself to come up with 10 ideas every day. These can be related to the project you’re working on, but they can also be on themes like, “10 ways I can save time,” “10 ridiculous inventions,” or “10 ways to better organize my bathroom.”
3: Stay in Contact With Lots of People
In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson says that innovation is largely the result of social collaboration. Any evolution, be it a new species or a new kind of bicycle, comes together from existing resources, building upon structures already in place. In the world of innovation, that means ideas build on existing ideas, knowledge, and skills.
This explains why, throughout history, multiple scientists, mathematicians, and inventors have discovered the same things at the same time, independently of one another—they each built upon the era’s existing knowledge base to realize the next stage of that knowledge.
Such ideas—ones that are within reach based on society’s currently available information and resources—are called the adjacent possible. Johnson argues that the best way to come up with adjacent possible ideas is to maintain a network of people who can show you new connections. These might be physical communities, online spaces, work groups, social organizations, membership groups dedicated to learning a skill (such as woodworking groups, for example), or any other type of community that facilitates collaboration between people. When you’re active in these groups, you’ll expose yourself to numerous ideas and will increase your chances of making innovative connections.
4. Look at Other Ideas in Fresh Ways
In Creative Quest, Grammy winner Questlove also advises that to come up with new ideas, you should examine existing ideas, and he adds that you can proactively spark innovative connections by interacting with creative works in unconventional ways. His focus is on artistic creative ideas, but his approach would work for any field you’re looking for novel solutions in.
For example, you could view photos in black and white or listen to a song at half-speed. When you change how you look at something, your brain processes information differently and can come up with fresh ideas.
(This technique is called defamiliarization, and it’s based on the fact that when we become overly familiar with an object or process, we stop truly seeing it—like the way you drive home on autopilot and don’t notice the journey. By deliberately making the familiar strange, you force your brain out of its automatic perception rut, and you can see things with renewed attention.)
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, each of these techniques is about opening up your mind to anything that might trigger an innovative thought. This not only means allowing your mind to wander but also providing it with points of interest to wander to. Once you’ve done that, your mind can take over and do what it does best—make connections, find solutions, and forge new paths.
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What’s your go-to method of sparking your creativity? What’s the most unexpected idea you’ve come up with? Share your comments!