ugh! I just need one good idea
Then stop killing your best ideas in your mind.
Read time: 8 minutes
I have a bad habit of getting good ideas, getting excited about them and executing them flawlessly… in my mind. I am really good at this bad habit though. So, I am going to wear my Dumbledore cape and share how I indulge in this bad habit.
Word of caution: Stop after I tell you how to get good ideas. Don’t execute it in your mind. I know it will be hard but resist the temptation. Your life will be so much better if you can execute it in the real world.
Now, beginning with the lesson, how do you get good ideas?
To get good ideas, get close to killing yourself.
Don’t trust me? Take the word of Harvey Specter then:
“What are your choices when someone holds a gun to your head? You do what they say or they shoot you, right?
Wrong! You take the gun, or pull out a bigger gun, or you call a bluff, or you do any of the other 146 other things”
Harvey Specter
When you’re under pressure, you are forced to come up with 149 good ideas.
Fortunately for you and me, the universe isn’t hell-bent on having great ideas under extreme pressure. You can experience the joy of discovering great ideas — the kind of joy and excitement that Archimedes had when he shouted ‘Eureka’ in a bathtub and ran down the street naked. He had discovered the basic idea that led to the principle of buoyancy.
That’s why what we are going to dive into now is a lifelong process and an effortless way of becoming an idea machine.
When I say effortless, I am lying. Anything that looks effortless rarely is when done right. Becoming an idea machine needs you to be intentional in your actions, to suffer through frustrations, and learn some patience. It's like training for a mental marathon — it takes time, practice, and some pain.
At the cost of being taken the wrong way, pleasure often comes from a little bit of pain. Runners know this. Writers know this. Anastasia from 50 Shades of Grey knows this.
It won't always be easy, but I can say this with certainty: it will be worth it. By the end of this newsletter, you'll have the tools to generate and record ideas that would make even Archimedes nod in approval.
xkcd rocks!
1. Have idea sex daily
By combining two existing ideas, you can give birth to a new, potentially better idea. Evolution works faster for ideas than for living organisms, so you'll always generate superior concepts after multiple generations of Idea Sex.
To have idea sex, I keep a stack of index cards, where I write pointers from my research, random bits and pieces of my consciousness, and quotes from books and internet that blow my mind away. It’s a great way to combine unrelated concepts to see what emerges.
What’s the connection between babies being attached to their mothers & a hero’s heroness being attached to the villainess of the villain?
There is a founder who applies a similar technique to generate business ideas. He captures words from the landing pages of different SASS startups, then he randomly picks 3 words to see if he can come up with something new from it.
E.g.: pet | excitement | food
You can learn more about idea sex in this documentary series by James Altucher
2. Morning Pages
Morning Pages have become my absolute favourite in the past year. All you have to do is, when you wake up, set a timer and write for 20 minutes (or 3 pages of an A5 size notebook). No topic, nothing. Let it flow. Whatever comes to your mind, keep the pen running.
When I don’t know what to write, I simply write, “I don’t know what to write…” The goal is to write any gibberish that comes to mind and capture the stream of consciousness in writing.
Don’t try to force anything. Let your ideas, thoughts, feelings, and conflicts, come out on paper. Allow your hand and mind to do their thing.
When your 20 minutes are up, go back and:
Underline the words that stand out.
Circle out the ideas that click with you.
Chances are you wrote about something that’s been on your mind lately. And when you go back and read what you have written, you can see exactly what’s going on in your mind. That gut feeling we talk about — morning pages give that gut feeling in writing.
It’s great if you can build this habit over time and practice it every morning. (I skip some days but never more than 3 in a row)
3. Create an idea journal
The best people I have seen or read about always document their ideas, hunches and observations regularly. I capture my ideas and observations in a dedicated journal and a Telegram channel.
For you, this idea journal could be a physical journal, a WhatsApp group with yourself, a Notion page, or a simple notes app. Anything that’s handy enough for you, so that you can quickly jot down something.
The biggest problem with idea journals is that we don’t revisit them quite often. Every avid note-taker in history has found value in the practice of note-taking only after revisiting it regularly. Darwin, who is famous for his theory of evolution, was constantly rereading his notes, discovering new implications. Taylor Swift also goes back to her randomly jotted down words and lyrics all the time.
I am terrible at revisiting my notes, this is why I am working on a Telegram bot called Ideawiz that takes your ideas and thoughts, organizes them on Notion and then sends you a weekly or daily email featuring all those ideas.
(I will share it with you soon, I am a bit stuck with the audio transcription thingy)
3. Read like crazy
If you feed garbage to your mind, it will spit out garbage in return, because that’s all it has. Read like crazy because the written word exposes you to a variety of ideas and gives you a chance to cultivate good taste. It creates a rich mental library from which you can draw connections. Let the works of greatness wash over you. You, my friend, are going to create something even better than that. And for that to happen, you need to know what’s done before. What can you do differently?
4. Meditate
Have moments of stillness in life, where your brain isn’t actively thinking about something nor is it influenced by external stimuli of some content. This moment of stillness can come from actual meditation or it can come from washing dishes, cleaning the house, cycling, showering, running…etc.
The moment of stillness helps clear the mental clutter and makes room for new ideas.
5. Travel (even locally)
New environments stimulate fresh thinking. Sheehan Quirke (The Cultural Tutor) walks on the streets of London every night until an idea about some architecture or historic culture strikes him, and he sits down to write his Twitter thread. He posts every single day without fail.
Try not to use home delivery apps as much as you can. Every time you go out to buy the things you need, you give space to your mind to wander around.
6. Surround yourself with generative people.
Everything I have talked about till now has been something you can do on your own. But now it’s time you connect with others as well, especially generative people. Generative people aren’t necessarily smart. (They can be, but it’s not a necessity). These people open up your mind to new perspectives just by conversations. Talking with them makes you see your ideas in a different light, it also gives you experimental ideas to expand on your hunch.
Steven Johnson didn’t necessarily talk about generative people, but he talked about liquid networks where being surrounded by a group of high-agency people completes the other half of your idea.
Most great ideas first take shape in a partial, incomplete form. They have the seeds of something profound, but they lack a key element that can turn the hunch into something truly powerful. And more often than not, that missing element is somewhere else, living as another hunch in another person’s head. Liquid networks create an environment where those partial ideas can connect; they provide a kind of dating service for promising hunches. They make it easier to disseminate good ideas, of course, but they also do something more sublime: they help complete ideas.”
Steven Johnson
7. Know your enemies
Somewhere along the way, I began to believe that the stuff I noticed was dumb, too obvious and not of use, boring and maybe even worthless. There were real people out there noticing real tangible things and I wasn’t one of them.
By pausing, opening an app or notebook to write an idea, a thought or an observation breathes life not only to the idea but to my conception of self as a writer, a person who takes her own ideas very seriously. And that affirmation is important to me.
Writing makes things real. The stuff of psychological observations and mundane conversations, the stuff that matters. It makes them real and at the forefront of my mind.
I started writing this newsletter issue 93 days ago. But you didn’t get to see it earlier because I was never ready. The idea of this newsletter seemed silly. As if there needs to be more and I need to come up with better ideas to fill that gap.
But there’s something that’s been bugging me since last month. Every time I don’t publish an almost ready piece hoping to improve it further. I miss out on my life’s reflection in this moment. Everytime I wait, it’s no longer today’s reflection.
My one clear takeaway from is perfectionism is the enemy of the idea muscle. Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm. From coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain.
That’s it, folks! I'd love to hear about your idea generation techniques. Reply to this email with your favorite method.
✍️Weekly Writing Prompt
What’s the story behind something inexpensive you have but it has a great value for you?
A little girl was playing with some stickers and sticking them on a bench. I liked them, after all it was Doremon and the unicorn 🦄
But I wasn't going to take them, in case she comes back again tomorrow.
After she left an uncle came and threw the stickers on the ground as they were losing their stickiness and he needed a place to sit.
So you know, finders ... takers.
My travel souvenir
📙Book I am re-reading this Week
Books by Steven Pressfield
I have been obsessed with Steven Pressfield’s books for quite some time. His every book whether it’s fiction or non-fiction is a page turner. He pushes you to do better as a writer, artist and entrepreneur. He places special emphasis on ‘Nobody wants to read your shit.’ Make it worthwhile for your reader.
Steven also talks about the resistance we face against our work, why it’s important, and how do we battle with it every waking moment.
If I had to give you an order of books that you should try reading Steven’s books:
The War of Art
Turning Pro
Do the work
Nobody wants to read your shit
He has got some amazing fiction books as well, which I will talk about another time.
In your reply email tell me:
Do you write your ideas down? What’s your process?
Do you revisit your old notes (this is something I am learning so I wanna hear how you do it)?
Much love,
Akanksha 🌻