By Nathan Thornton
Step 1. Be Ready When They Come.
Ideas are out there. They are constantly swirling and floating all around you, bumping and crashing into one another.
But at the end the day, or the week, or the month, how many ideas do you manage to capture, tame, and domesticate for actual use? If you’re like most people, the answer is zero. Maybe one. Statistically, people have about one truly great, swing-for-the-fences, light-the-world-on-fire idea a year. And they either do something about it or they don’t. Usually, they don’t. Because most people, through no fault of their own, don’t know how to have an idea.
It’s more or less a cliché that the best ideas come to you when you aren’t looking for them. But it’s true. They don’t come when you’re sitting at your desk, when you’re wracking your brain trying to come up with a way to expand the market for flea collars. They don’t come when you’re in a meeting, driving yourself crazy trying to find a way to cut $400 out of the office snack budget without cutting out the Chex Party Mix or having to downgrade to Chex Intimate Gathering Mix.
But they do come. They come in pieces and they come in parts. Little bits of an idea will come when you’re sharpening your lawn mower blade, or looking for your old high-school mix tapes. Half-formed ideas hit you when you’re comparison-shopping yogurt at the supermarket. They come when you’re not at all ready.
And as simple as it sounds, all you have to do to be ready is to watch for them. To let them in when they come. To be ready whenever you aren’t ready. These ideas won’t be complete, they won’t be world-changers, but they’ll be a start. And once you start recognizing them, the floodgates will open.
Related Books:
Sam Harrison, IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
Roger van Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative
Jack Foster, Ideaship: How to Get Ideas Flowing in Your Workplace
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