Unlock Your Creativity

I was listening to an interview with James Altucher, author of The James Altucher Idea List, and someone who has over 1 million followers on LinkedIn.  I was struck by this statement:

 

“If you can’t come up with ten ideas, come up with 20 ideas.”

 

(I then tracked down an article he wrote that includes the quote – you can read it here.)

 

Now on the surface, that sounds kind of silly.  But it aligns with what I’ve read or hear from others, like Seth Godin, in this Tim Ferriss podcast episode:

 

“If you put enough bad ideas into the world,
sooner or later your brain will wake up,
and the good ideas will come”

 

This reminds me very much of common advice in brainstorming sessions:

• The object is to come up with as many ideas as we can.
• Critique of ideas is not allowed.
• There are no bad ideas at this stage, throw anything you think of up on the wall.

 

When you remove the filters, it can really help the creativity flow.  Particularly in a group setting, ‘bad’ ideas create laughter, loosen people up, and unlock creative expression.  Evaluation or prioritization of ideas can come later, when you have an exhaustive list to work from.

 

One of the thoughts behind the quotes above is that if you are getting stuck, it’s likely that you are putting filters on your thinking that are blocking you.  You’re only writing down ideas that you think are good ones, worthy of consideration, and quickly running out of them.  If you instead write down everything without filters, you will push through to many other ideas that you wouldn’t have considered, and some of those are going to lead you to promising possibilities.

 

So what would happen if the next time you got stuck for ideas on that project you are tackling, you applied this approach?

 

If you can only come up with 2 ideas for how to approach it, push to come up with 5,  If you can’t think of more than 5 options, force yourself to think up 15, no matter how outlandish they may be.  And so on.

 

Let me know what happens.