5 ideas to have more (and better) ideas

1 Let the ideas find you.

There are more people than ideas.

Just as there are more people than gestures.

Therefore people must make the same gestures and have the same ideas.

So you don’t have ideas or gestures.

Ideas, like gestures, have you.

You just need to create the best conditions for them to arrive.

If you want to get one hour of good painting in you have to have four hours of uninterrupted time.

Occupy the conscious mind let the unconscious mind work.

Then the ideas will find you.

2 Stay on the bus.

Ideas love patience.

And tenacity.

An idea is two pre-existing concepts in a new context.

So don’t sweat inspiration.

Or even imitation.

Take two or more pre-existing concepts.

Combine them.

Then bring the new context.

That’s you.

(And no one can do you apart from you).

All busses leaving the Helsinki Bus Station take the same road for a kilometre before diverging.

If you get off any bus too early, you end up in the same place.

But stay on a bus long enough and you can find yourself somewhere completely new.

Don’t let the feeling of unoriginality stop you.

Originality lies on the far side of unoriginality.

Be patient.

Be tenacious.

Stay on the bus.

3 Limit yourself.

Ideas love confined spaces.

They’re less keen on limitlessness.

Set a trap for them and they’ll walk right into it.

A fixed number of pages.

A single location.

Two characters.

12 minutes to write it.

A chapter before the train arrives.

Confines create problems that ideas can’t help solving.

Ideas love limits.

4 ABC (Always Be Capturing)

Ideas can be shy.

They don’t like formality.

They don’t tend to want to be forced.

They like to appear at midnight.

Or to slip in over dinner.

Or to drop on the train.

Not when you sit down at your desk with your blank word doc.

Gather raw material.

Any time and all the time.

And keep turning up at the page.

Wherever you are.

Keep it simple.

Reduce the friction.

ABC.

Always Be Capturing.

5 Execute your ideas.

The secret to the best ideas? They exist.

An idea is nothing but execution.

“I can believe in your vision without believing in your business model.”

Reduce the gap between idea and iteration.

Share it.

Test the idea into reality.

Then refine it.

It’s not the first person to have the idea.

It’s the first person to do the idea.

Execute your ideas.