stop looking. this is not a blog post on romance (although the advice for romantic relationships is probably the same). it’s actually about how to generate great ideas and great ideas come from combining what seems like disparate things to form something new, fresh, and seemingly original. in his groundbreaking book, a technique for producing ideas, james webb argues that “an idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of elements.” in order to piece together those elements one must search for previously unidentified relationships and associations.
what’s counterintuitive is that searching for those relationships is often best done after we gather all of the information we can, “chew on it,” and then stop thinking about the challenge and allow our subconscious to do the work. doing this allows us to tap into a greater processing and storage capability. i imagine it is similar to how we work with our computers.
have you every created a folder on your desktop to access files that you need frequently? that’s what it’s like when we directly focus on the task at hand – we are only working with the files we have stored for quick access. however, when we go play video games, go to a movie, listen to music, or read a book, we allow our minds to tap into the rich history of memories, knowledge, and other things that may help us solve the problem but are not readily stored in our “quick access files.”
doing something else besides being consumed with the problem may feel wrong but, lucky for us, our brain actually never stops working on the problem. this is why we have that magical “eureka” moment where we believe that our great idea came out of thin air. it didn’t. we were working it over the entire time – searching for new combinations and relationships in the back of our mind. the reality is, we just didn’t know it.
so next time you have a huge marketing problem or personal problem to solve, don’t be afraid to daydream. you never know what you might come up with.
I appreciate this post, Tav. But there is definitely an element called effort that goes into relationships as well as ideas. Even daydreaming takes effort sometimes, in between all the rest the day throws at you. Sometimes it's a relief, and sometimes it's a chore, more brainstorming. Personally, I rarely go to bed without activating my idea centers and seeing what my subconscious came up with throughout the day. I am definitely what is called an experiential/reflective learner, meaning I learn by experiencing rather than visualizing, and reflecting rather than real-time assimilation. I think a lot of people share that reflective part, although they don't necessarily give themselves the time to reflect. It's so crucial. It's like giving your body time to digest before expecting it to perform on the dance floor or in a performance. You have to have time to break down to the “elements.” thanks for this…
I thought you might tap into the fact that sometimes if you keep searching you never actually get around to deciding. ie: settling down because you're always on the hunt for something better.
@paul – you are definitely right about effort being required. this post assumes that you have already done that step. as i mentioned briefly in the post, it's about gathering the data and then chewing on it; it's not until after you have done those two parts that you “stop looking.” and clearly, the relationships you find will be limited to the data you gathered and chewed on. gather nothing, and you have nothing for your subconscious to work with. every night when you reflect, you are chewing on the data and information from the data. this is an excellent process to set you up to generate great ideas.
@tanya – you, too are right. there is definitely a point of paralysis analysis. you can stare at the data all day, but at some point you have to start ideating because that deadline and deliverable is fast approaching. mining and searching through the data is great, but at some point, you have to make progress. that's why people talk about not “boiling the ocean” but instead finding the 20% of data that has 80% of what you need to make a great decision or generate a great idea. nevertheless, if there is no deadline, we should just be consuming information (movies, art, literature, people, culture, etc) so (1) when there is a deadline we have proactively filled our mind w/ great information to pull from and (2) our mind has material to use so that we can ideate even when there is no deliverable on the radar.
@paul – you are definitely right about effort being required. this post assumes that you have already done that step. as i mentioned briefly in the post, it's about gathering the data and then chewing on it; it's not until after you have done those two parts that you “stop looking.” and clearly, the relationships you find will be limited to the data you gathered and chewed on. gather nothing, and you have nothing for your subconscious to work with. every night when you reflect, you are chewing on the data and information from the data. this is an excellent process to set you up to generate great ideas.
@tanya – you, too are right. there is definitely a point of paralysis analysis. you can stare at the data all day, but at some point you have to start ideating because that deadline and deliverable is fast approaching. mining and searching through the data is great, but at some point, you have to make progress. that's why people talk about not “boiling the ocean” but instead finding the 20% of data that has 80% of what you need to make a great decision or generate a great idea. nevertheless, if there is no deadline, we should just be consuming information (movies, art, literature, people, culture, etc) so (1) when there is a deadline we have proactively filled our mind w/ great information to pull from and (2) our mind has material to use so that we can ideate even when there is no deliverable on the radar.