The Idea Fun Factory – Reaching Escape Velocity

Ideas are everywhere. You can’t walk down the sidewalk without tripping over the uneven surfaces of ideas. Things, in general, are imperfect, which always leaves room for ideas. As John Maynard Keynes wrote, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

I like to think of those old ideas as having a certain gravity. We are loathe to leave them because we feel they have been tried and true. In leaving gravity behind we need to develop escape velocity. In leaving old ideas of how things should be done behind we need fresh perspective. Perspective is the rut we find ourselves in when we can’t quite solve a tough riddle. We must flex mental muscles that we are not used to working with in order to pick ourselves up out of the rut. There are a number of ways to do this. You have to figure out how to unstick your brain. Have you ever tried to think of a word or a person’s name and have it on the tip of your tongue, and the harder you try to summon the word the more it eludes you? To think creatively you need to put down the paper and pencil for a moment and do something that gets your mind out of its stuck state. In their blog, Marc and Angel talk about 10 ways to do this:

1. Relocate Yourself to an Inspiring Environment

2. Go Back to What’s Important – reflecting upon your core values may spur you back into the mode where you were creative before

3. Follow the White Rabbit – follow your hunches down the rabbit hole and see where they lead

4. Believe in the Universe, Practice Patience – If you firmly believe that positive things can happen, they gradually will. If you firmly believe that you can get unstuck and move onward, you gradually will.

5. Embrace the Natural Pathways – Develop the systems that work for you to become unstuck.

6. Ask for Help – reach out to that supporting cast of friends, family, and mentors

7. Break the Cycle of Worry and Work on Something Else – similar to many of these other helpful hints, shifting your focus releases the stress around what you’re stuck on and can unstick it.

8. Respect your Frequency – we all work best under certain conditions. Find the ones that work for you. If you’re stuck perhaps you just need to shift your environment or your processes by a little bit.

9. Walk through the Door – Take a step. Most barriers are psychological. Journeys do not begin without first taking a step.

10. Begin again in the Morning – Tomorrow is another day. Sometimes you are simply cached out. I would add to Marc and Angel’s remarks here with a simple recommendation to go to sleep thinking about solving the problem. You may benefit from a night’s sleep where your subconcious takes on the blocker.

So get out there and unstick yourself. I also like the exercise of thinking bigger when you’re stuck. Think beyond the world that swirls around you and catches you in its every day maelstrom. Look for beauty, stop and smell the roses, and you might come up with the next big thing or at least solve that sticky issue that has been keeping you up at night. Next up on the idea train, let's talk about tracking your ideas