I get asked all the time, "Where do you get your ideas?" Frankly, there's no easy answer to that question. I get ideas from everywhere, any time, all the time.
Ideas are like trees, they start as a seed, grow fruit and give more seeds! They also have lots of branches to explore! What may seem like a random thought or a case of your mind wandering is sometimes the creative process brewing. Sometimes that little seed might not seem like much but it could grow into a mighty forest. Hey, Microsoft was just a seed in the mind of Bill Gates decades ago!
It's a natural ability in the human thought process to explore and to expand. Before you toss out a random thought stop and examine it - it might be the kernel of a brilliant idea! Of course, it might be just a brain fart, but if you immediately blow it off you'll never know where it could have led you. Make a practice of examining your thoughts before you ignore them, let them ease on down the road map of your head and see where they end up. If it's a dead end all you've lost is a bit of daydream time but it could fork off down a new path of creativity and even commerce.
Ideas are always popping up in my head. Ideas for new art, new products, a book, a business and the occasional brain fart which leads nowhere, BUT, I always make a note in my phone of each idea, no matter how silly or trivial. I add all these thoughts to my “think tank” file for future reference. If I find myself uninspired I go through this file to see if something there sparks another idea. I am surprised at how many times some of these stray "brain farts" fit in nicely with a current project I'm working on.
Ideas and inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime which is why I always have a way to record them. I use my phone since it's always at hand and has both a voice recorder and a sticky notes feature, but you might want to keep a notepad, sticky notes or even a mini digital voice recorder at hand. Ideas are fleeting and ethereal, they can disappear like a whiff of smoke. Capture that smoke, bottle that lightening because it might be the start of an explosion of greatness!
Keep in mind that you don't have to jump on each idea as it occurs to you. You can set it on a back burner and let it simmer a bit, come back to it when the time is right. To everything there is a season. Timing is a big part of successful ideas. That idea might not be ready to germinate in the now but there is a reason it came to you. Be aware that time is fluid when it comes to ideas! Maybe your future brain is sending back that idea as a bit of fertilizer - don't mistake it for b.s. - it might just be nourishment for the soil of your thought garden!
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2 comments:
What a great piece on creativity! Aside from recording things on paper or audio tape, I often think that our memories themselves have a mechanism that tells us which ideas and experiences are good ingredients for a creation. I call it what stands out in yellow highlighter. Experiences or thoughts we keep going back to, kind of always at the back of our mind. They are keepers, and since they refuse to be erased from our memories, their presence tells us that. I wrote a short story recently from my keepers. It was stunning, I thought one of my best efforts. I think of these bits like the glass pieces in the kaleidescope of our minds, available for a new twist where all the content falls in a new way, new picture, or new creation.
Funny, exactly what I said in this post - about being surprised at how many times some of these stray "brain farts" fit in nicely with a current project I'm working on - actually happened in this post!
I had written this post a few weeks ago, but I needed to add a final thought and edit it but hadn't gotten to it.
Then I started doing my pencil sketching again and this particular thought in the post image popped into my head and I did it up as a "new word definition" scrap and photographed it with my cell for a quick post to Tumblr for fun.
When I opened up this word doc there was the same concept in words!
See, the Universe really does have a plan for everything, lol.
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