Day 2 30DC - Getting Ideas

You don't have to be a creative genius to get ideas. You just have to do a little bit of research and get your brain thinking along lines of idea generation. Ed's training videos and podcasts today showed a number of places online to scan for ideas. What we're looking for are topics that people are interested in and searching for information on. More importantly, we're looking for things that people are passionate about. If no one cares about your topic area or niche, how can you be successful doing business in it?

This first exercise is really just brainstorming -- searching for idea starters and then jotting them down without editing or evaluation until you get as long a list as you can manage.

Care and Feeding of Ideas
To spark ideas, for whatever it is you need them, it is important to tell both your conscious and your subconscious that you need ideas. As you take steps, consciously, to generate ideas by doing research or "sitting for ideas" which is just being still and pondering your topic, your brain begins to work at coming up with ideas that would be suitable. To get the subconscious mind on board (and this is the one you really need for idea generation), as an idea comes into your mind you need to acknowledge that idea by writing it down.

Acknowledging the idea validates the actions your brain has taken and rewards it for a fruitful search (doesn't matter at this point whether it's a "good" idea, just that an idea has occurred). With that encouragement, your mind begins to look for more ideas, to get more encouragement and acknowledgment. Thus the floodgates begin to open so ideas can stream through.

If you get an idea and you dismiss it, or you fail to write it down, it will go away. The next idea will be more difficult to generate, and if you ignore your ideas long enough, you won't get any new ones.

If your business or academic career depends on the generation of new ideas, don't go anywhere without a notebook and writing instrument to keep track of ideas that come to you. I have a tiny voice recorder that I use while driving because I often get ideas in traffic. (There's a reason for this that I'll explain in a subsequent post, but it has to do with the Theta brain state.)

We've all had that experience of having a great idea, an awesome idea, a million-dollar idea, and then forgetting it a short time afterward. Because we didn't write it down. Take my advice, never be without a means of capturing your ideas, and iif it should happen that the great idea occurs to you while you are completely unarmed for making note of it, figure out some mnemonic that might help you remember it. A rhyme, a string around your finger, a specific phrase. Then jot it down at the first opportunity.

All you need is one good idea to make your fortune.