Ideaflow

Creativity is a practice, not an innate ability. It can be seen as the craft of problem solving. Ideas are creating a new connection between two other ideas that already exist, but in a new an novel way.

The best way to improve your creativity is to generate a ton of ideas, everyday. Practice.

Then once you have a bunch of ideas, test them out in the real world, with real action. Only through testing do you know which ones are good ideas vs bad ideas. Treat every failure as learning. You didn't fail, you learned a new way that doesn't work to solve the problem at hand.

Quantity matters more than Quality. Quality will come with testing and iteration. Don't spend time/money on perfecting the wrong idea.

Fear stands in the way of creativity and idea generation, so you must act fearlessly. Hold all judgement and let tests guide decision making. Data is better than assumptions.

The Problem Queue

Keep a list of all problems you need to solve. Focus on one at a time.

Daily Ideaflow Practice.

1. The night before, select a problem. Think about the problem as you are getting ready for bed.
2. Sleep some quality sleep, letting your subconscious mind mull over the problem
3. While you are getting ready, having coffee, etc, in the morning, think about the problem in a relaxed way. don't force it. Then, before work, jot down at least 10 ideas.

Measuring Ideaflow

For your daily practice, set a timer for the 10 ideas. 2 minutes? And then it's:

Track this daily. If you get to 10 before the 2 minutes is up, keep going. Quantity is the goal.