White’s of Henry Lane

One of the most limiting misconceptions you can have is the belief that there are idea people and there are people who can’t have ideas. The reason some people believe this is that they think the only end result of having ideas are things like iPods, coffee tables that double as dining tables, or ad lines that stick in your head. That’s bunk. Having ideas, creativity, problem solving; these are things that everybody does everyday. Pull a menu together from the limited food in your fridge? Drop a function from 80 lines of code to 20 lines? Sheet-hitch your shoelaces so you could walk home? Ideas, everyone of them.

The key to going from little ideas to big ideas is the same as developing any other skill: practice.

Probably the best work on building your creative muscles is a 50-page booklet by Advertising Hall of Fame inductee James Webb Young called “A Technique for Producing Ideas“. This book may be hard to track down, but try in college or marketing-focused bookstores. (Alternatively, try “How to Get Ideas“, which is essentially a more verbose version of “Technique” that has illustrations.)

Young puts forward a five step process for getting ideas that is so common-sensical, most people will completely discount it.

1. gather raw material (by reading, experiencing, watching many varied things)
2. think about those raw materials a lot, and go deep in them
3. go do something else for a while as this stuff marinates
4. be open to the idea when it suddenly appears
5. implement it, working out the hidden flaws you didn’t see during the “eureka” moment

Obviously I paraphrase. I really hope you track down this book and read it for yourself.

There’s one part of “practicing” that Young left out: having lots of ideas. The more ideas you have, the better you’ll be at having them, and the more of them will be winners. Realizing this, I came up with a little hack. I call it “Ten Things Today”, because I was able to doodle up a little logo for that in my sketch pad. The goal is this: write down ten ideas every day in a notebook. They can be about anything at all, and they can be as daft as you want. You can write down the missing link in cold fusion, or you can think of the practical applications of a chocolate settee. Just as long as ten things are going in that book every day. Keep these things, and watch the progression in the quality of your ideas.

Don’t worry about having a paper trail of ridiculous ideas. Apocryphal tales abound about superstar CEOs who show up to every meeting with 100 ideas, 99 of which are terrible. It only takes one!