A 5-Step Technique for Producing Ideas circa 1939 - Brain Pickings

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Step 1: Gathering Raw Material

It is important to gather a rich pool of raw material. This can only be done by reading extensively and constantly feeding your brain with new ideas.

Are you someone who constantly runs out of ideas? Ask yourself how often you are filling yourself with new knowledge.

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The first principle is that an idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.

JAMES WEBB YOUNG

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Step 2: Digesting the Material

When we eat, the food is digested in a complex manner. It is tossed and turned and goes through tonnes of different processes just to be digested.

We must do the same when we are absorbing knowledge. Seek to see the facts from different perspectives and apply them.

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What you do is to take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them all over, as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it.

JAMES WEBB YOUNG

402 reads

Step 3: Unconscious Processing

Once you have wrestled with the facts and digested them, you must now divert your attention away from the problem.

Try your best to not think of the problem you are trying to solve creatively by stimulating your mind in another way.

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When you reach this third stage in the production of an idea, drop the problem completely and turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Listen to music, go to the theatre or movies, read poetry or a detective story.

JAMES WEBB YOUNG

383 reads

Step 4: The A-HA Moment

Eventually, an idea will seem to pop out of thin air. Without you even thinking about it everything will come together.

At this stage, you will have a bright idea that you think will work.

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It will come to you when you are least expecting it — while shaving, or bathing, or most often when you are half-awake in the morning. It may waken you in the middle of the night.