Ideas, ideas, ideas!

Five methods to supercharge the idea machine in our brain.

There are times where it feels like we’re just bursting at the seams with idea after idea after idea. Other times, our lack of ideas feels absolutely crippling and it can turn us off a creative pursuit entirely.

One of the best things to ever happen to me as a writer was to try to write a few articles, get them published, and then just completely freeze. I remember telling my mentor that I just could NOT think of anything and that I was tripping over my own feet even trying to. He just smirked at me and told me that if I didn’t have an abundance of ideas then I wouldn’t have been a pain in his ass for over a decade. I’m not sure that I was ready to receive his message and honestly, I’m not sure that I was ready to fully believe in myself as a creative.

As the years flew by, I started to notice moments where my brain would practically tell me by itself, without any direct effort from me, that either a thought I had or something I observed would be a great idea for an article. It bugged me that when I actively tried, I’d find myself falling short. However, when I did nothing, the ideas seemed to flow effortlessly. I began to pay more and more attention to when this would happen and began studying why this was happening.

So many of us struggle from the curses of ‘I don’t have any ideas’ or ‘I don’t know if this will be original’ and so on and so forth. I learned so much from my own struggle that I wanted share it all with everyone in the hope that it may help even just one person. The following are some practical thoughts to turn your brain into an idea churning machine:

1. The Daily Practice.

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The author and polymath James Altucher employs a very direct daily practice that strengthens the muscles of the idea machine in your brain. He advises us to do the following:

Every day, write a list of ten ideas pertaining to any topic. Ten dog names, ten monikers for professional clowns, ten crazy cat names you might find at a shelter, and so on and so forth. The brain loves repetition. Your answers can be as whacky and out there as you want!

As a certain massively popular life coach and speaker with big chompers would say: ‘Where attention goes, energy flows’ (Tony Robbins). If you practice formulating ideas every single day, your brain becomes progressively better at doing so every single day. I’ve found that the first five or so in your daily list will be relatively easy to throw out there but as you get to six, you can feel the actual tension in your brain as you try to close out your list. I’ve learned to love that feeling because it really makes you feel like your brain is getting a workout.

Also, I’m going to toss this in here because it’s also something that everyone could benefit from doing daily: Carry around a small pocket notebook! I bought a three pack of pocket notebooks off of amazon and carrying one around has made it so I can capture inspiration whenever it strikes! Anytime I get an idea or see something that I think could be helpful for my writing, I pull that bad boy out and get to jotting.

2. Work on a different task

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In an almost paradoxical manner, ideas tend to come to in abundance when we’re NOT actively trying to formulate them. How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I get my best ideas in the shower’? I tend to get my best ones while walking my dog, exercising (specifically cardio), and while meditating.

It seems to me that if we give our brains a specific goal, a part of it will focus on that goal while the rest of the brain works on endlessly processing everything including your specific problem.

Have you ever been stuck on something and when you step away to do something else and then return to it, it seems like a no brainer? One of my favorite examples is video game bosses. I can struggle immensely on a boss but if I step away and do something else and then return to the boss later, I can beat him effortlessly.

The same goes with why we have our best ideas in the shower. Sure, there are neurochemical processes that occur due to the relaxing nature of the hot water (or cold if that’s more your style), but you’re also accomplishing a micro goal. A part of your brain is focused on the shower itself while the rest is processing whatever is not currently at the forefront of your mind.

Next time you find yourself stuck or lacking ideas, try going for a walk, taking a nice shower, doing thirty minutes of cardio, meditating, or whatever it is that you feel will help.

3. Consume

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We are the totality of everything our brains have consumed throughout our lifetime. Every experience - love, heartbreak, awe, grief, ecstasy - and every book, movie, painting, shitpost, ad infinitum, that our brain has consumed. All of this and the way your brain has processed it all is what makes you who you are. The thing is that, because of this, no two people are ever going to be exactly the same. Which means that no two perspectives are going to be the same.

If one wants to get better at writing then they should both write more and read more. Same goes for whichever discipline you may be pursuing. Its safe to assume a musician loves listening to music just as an artist presumably has a deeper appreciation of the work of other artists and interest in art history.

What’s the point of me telling you all this? Well, I’m priming you for lucky number four:

4. Steal

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Perhaps controversial for obvious reasons yet most likely any creative’s best resource, bar none. Everything we create, whether we fully realize it or not, is building off of the work of others. I never thought I’d be referencing Instagram and TikTok as perfect examples of this, yet here we are! Honestly, it could not be more clearly laid out.

On TikTok or Instagram Reels, someone creates a trend and if that trend happens to go viral, everyone creates their own version of that trend. TikTok made millionaires out of people who would see a dance on TikTok, record their own version of it, and then rake in thousands of viewers per video.

On both platforms, you’ll see a video for the first time and then all of a sudden, you’ll notice a million other videos of different people doing the exact same trend. THAT’S what I mean when I say stealing is your greatest resource.

I emphasized consumption and unique perspectives in the ‘Consume’ section because something that used to stop me from starting on a project was that I felt like someone had already done it before or that my idea wasn’t original enough. I've come to learn that I’m honestly not sure if there is such a thing as an original idea but what I do know is that your unique perspective, your unique take on the idea, hasn’t been done yet. It ends up being a foolish reason to not move forward with our projects.

How many times have you seen a movie or tv show where the influences are blindingly obvious to you, yet you still end up enjoying the content anyway? In making this Substack, for example, one of the first things I did was scour for successful Substacks that were putting out the sort of content I want to be putting out. What were they writing about? How did they design their page? And so on and so forth.

Go take a look at the people in your field who are doing what you want to be doing and draw inspirations from all of them. Trust me, they probably did the exact same thing.

*Heavy emphasis on this not meaning ‘go out there and plagiarize, son!’*.

5. Collaborate

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Last but certainly not least, collaborate! Having someone that you can riff off of can help your process tremendously. It always brings me back to the image of a writer’s room for a TV show. Let’s imagine you’re the show runner in a room with three writers (your collaborators). You have a basic idea that you’re trying to build off of and you are hoping the writers can help you take it to the next level. Writer one yells out an idea that you don’t like, so you axe it. Writer two does the same and you also don’t like it. Writer three yells something out there that resonates with you so you write it on the board as a way to move forward with your original idea. And then you repeat the process and build from that and so on and so forth.

Just as you have your unique perspectives, so do your collaborators. So, if you get stuck, see if there’s someone you can reach out to for their take or opinion. Ask multiple people, even, if you feel that would be a greater help.

I hope you’ll be able to take something away from this that’ll help you move forward on your journey through this funky life. Keep fighting the good fight!