| Stupid,
idiotic, bad ideas are great. Think of bad ideas. Think of very,
very stupid ideas. I challenge you - think of five stupid ways you
could improve your business or lifestyle right now. Five rubbish
ideas.
Bad ideas are good because bad ideas
lead to good ideas. If you wanted to be a photographer but didn’t
take a single photograph until you were sure that every photo you
were going to take would be a good one - you wouldn’t take
any photos. Creativity seems like an illusive mist to most people
who think that creativity is some sort of gift. It is not a gift,
it is a skill. Like any skill it has methods that need to be mastered.
Like any skill the methods need to be practised. Just knowing the
lines of a play aren't enough. It's the rehearsal that makes it
work.
You can learn how to negotiate, how
to project manage and how to sell. There are courses on all of those.
You can practice those in your field of work. But don't leave out
creativity from the mix. Learn the techniques and use them to get
the ideas to get ahead.
We need to think new thoughts. Find better ways of doing things.
Find better things to do. That's what people overlook. That's what
creativity is.
So when you have a problem and you
need a solution don't be concerned with convention. Don't be concerned
with what's expected. Don't be concerned with what people will think.
Don't even be concerned with what's possible. If you put constraints
like these on your ideas or if you judge your ideas during the brainstorming
phase you might as well give up and join the legion of mediocrity
because these things will prevent you from having the best ideas
at best, but will more than likely totally kill the process at worst.
Work out what is actually possible
and allowed later, in the planning phase, not in the creative ideas
phase. Learn to play, to make new associations, swap things around,
wonder, be silly, experiment. These are the attributes that will
enable you to solve the problem with a unique solution and to think
of that elusive winning idea.
Where do good ideas come from? From
Bad ideas. So don't be a fool, think of foolish ideas. Get them
out and get them out of the way. Don’t judge them or analyse
them, just get them flowing out. It’s from associations connected
to these bad ideas that the really great ideas will come.
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