Today, my friends, I will tell you about an easy exercise which you can do every day to boost your idea making process. It only takes 5 mins to complete. And just in a few weeks (really depends on your dedication) you will notice that you can come up with decent ideas on your feet. No one was born with an ability to come up with ideas. That means, connecting random nodes of information into good and original ideas is just a skill. But how would you learn or practice such skill? Well, turns out it's not that hard according to one of my favorite authors, James Altucher. James, came up with a very easy and effective exercise, which he is doing himself. The point of this exercise is to practice your "Idea muscle", James says. And may be, its not the most precise description of what is actually happening in your brain when you do this exercise, but it definitely works. In a few weeks, if of course, you will be repeating the exercise, you will develop new group of synapses in your brain, which will be dedicated to idea creation process.
Instructions:
- You have to choose a topic. Topic Structure Example: "How can I improve something", "How can I make something better", "10 ideas for creating/developing/making something better", "10 ways to surprise some one" and etc. It can be almost anything. Unfamiliar topics work best, since they will be more challenging to you.
- Then you have to come up with 10 ideas according to your topic. Do not spent too much time on it, after all it is an exercise.
- That's it! You will be your own judge. So don’t pick impossible topics and don’t pick the easiest too. Set realistic goals. Remember that this exercise is prioritizing quantity over quality, but with time and enough dedication, quality of the ideas will improve too.
I will provide my own example, which I've chosen for today.
Topic: "Best name for this post"
As you can see, some of the ideas are pretty similar, but as I've said, the difficulty of this exercise is totally up to you and as long as you are doing it every day for at least a few weeks, you will have a huge improvment.