PART 1: UNLOCK YOUR BRAIN!
The Oxford Dictionary defines Creativity as follows:
“the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work”
Where do ideas come from and how do we develop them?
This article details three tools that we can use to generate some starting ideas and begin to unlock our brains.
A key concept is to not censor your ideas. Just get them out there.
The physicist Linus Pauling said it best: “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”
Tool 1: Notice What You Notice
An excellent source of inspiration is just by noticing and capturing those small moments that we encounter everyday. Song lyrics. An interesting phrase in something that we read or see. Snippets of overheard conversations. The list goes on and on. But you have to realize that our memory is fragile and we might forget. Use your phone voice recorder, camera, notes feature, or a small notebook to record these observations as you encounter them. Do not be concerned that you don’t know how you will eventually use this information.
Capture first.
Curate later.
Here are a few examples from my own files
- A sign on a bus that says “we can’t guarantee sunshine, but there will be wine.”
- A women on her cell phone talking with someone “It’s not just her, it’s her damn dog too.”
- A guy in the park in front of the library, juggling paper grocery bags with handles.
- A song lyric: I’m just a fool on a stool
Tool 2: Brainstorming
Select something and come up with some thoughts about the subject. List as many as you can, but don’t stop too soon. As magician Ed Marlo said “Most magicians stop thinking too soon”
The point here is to get lots of ideas. Turn off your internal censor….you know, the one that says “that’s dumb” or “that will never work”
Collect first
Curate later
Here are some prompts for you to try. A good target is 20 ideas. You’ll probably find that the first few come easily. Keep pushing! The good stuff is deep in your subconscious. If you can only come up with a few ideas, that’s ok too-you might find that your subconscious is working in the background so you might come with additional ideas at really odd moments.
- Things you can do with a brick
- How to make a fair tax system
- How is a zoo like your workplace
Years ago I tried to come up with 50 different things that I could do with water. Number 50 was “kill a wicked witch”. I’m really proud of that but wouldn’t have uncovered it without coming up with 49 others.
Tool 3: Word Association
Write a word in the middle of the page. Draw a box around it. Make a list of words or phrases that are directly related to that word in the first level.
For the second level, write words or phrases that relate to your level 1 words.
And so forth.
Here’s my example, starting with the word BLACK
What you are looking for are some unexpected connections. For me, in the lower left I ended up with “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue” –which is directly connected to blues which is a type of music.
Maybe I could write a blues song about a wedding that didn’t go quite right?
In the upper left I see a “slipper” connecting both Cinderella and Dorothy (from the Wizard of Oz). An idea for a story?
Your Turn
Get a piece of paper or open up a file on your computer and practice each of these ideas for a few minutes. Repeat every day for the next few days.
After these few days you’ll hopefully have lots of ideas and random thoughts scattered across multiple pages.
The next piece in this series will discuss some thoughts on how to expand these ideas into an even larger universe of ideas.
Quantity leads to quality.