Creative Practice

A hallmark of the "not done, but begun" mentality is regular, disciplined practice. It's how we improve in any skillset, and creative thinking is no different.

From the fantastic "A Technique for Producing Ideas":

"With the art of producing ideas [what] is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which ideas are produced... The production of ideas is as definite a process as the production of Fords... in this production the mind follows an operative technique which can be learned and controlled; and its effective use is just as much a matter of practice in the technique as is the effective use of any tool."

I loved an anecdote about how Benjamin Franklin grew in his abilities as a writer, from Isaacson's book:

"As part of his self-improvement course, Franklin read the essays, took brief notes, and laid them aside for a few days. Then he tried to recreate the essay in his own words, after which he compared his composition to the original. Sometimes he would jumble up the notes he took, so that he would have to figure out on his own the best order to build the essay's argument.

"He turned some of the essays into poetry, which helped him expand his vocabulary by forcing him to search for words that had similar meanings but different rhythms and sounds. These, too, he turned back into essays after a few days, comparing them to see where he had diverged from the original. When he found his own version wanting, he would correct it... More than making himself merely 'tolerable' as a writer, he became the most popular writer in colonial America."

Like any skill -- creative, like Franklin's writing craft, or otherwise -- the production of ideas requires practice. What might that practice look like? It's deceivingly simple, actually. Start writing down ideas. Every day.

James Altucher recommends a regular habit of coming up with 10 ideas every single day in his post, "The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine." And I agree with him that, if that seems like a lot, then shoot for 20. The goal is not quality; it's quantity. I recommend you self-assign to the quantity group.

That being said, I think any kind of a discipline is better than nothing. Shoot for five a day. If you can't think of ideas, start with problems to solve, or things that stink. Just get them down, and capture them in a way that you can revisit them in the future. As we say at the d.school, "If you don't capture it, it didn't happen."

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