Ideas are only as good as you want them to be

Earlier in my posts I talked about why you should value your ideas and as promised I will discuss in this blog about how you can produce good ideas, and that it is a muscle just like building your muscles at the gym.

Producing ideas takes time and effort, and should be habitual, what you thought this was going to be easy? I learned through various readings that if you practice long enough that eventually you will create great ideas.

You should look and understand other people's ideas always stay up to date with current inventions and innovations. Great place to visit is Trend Hunter to follow up on the latest creations. Other places like Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, Time magazine, the world wide web, google  or even your local newspaper you can find what other people have produced and how maybe it can spark an idea within you or how you can make that even better.

The way to practice idea creations is by writing down at least 10 ideas a day doesn't matter how stupid they may be. By doing this you will have written 3650 ideas by the end of the year. Keep doing this until you come up with something that is worth pursuing and taking action. How long will it take to come up with a good idea? It depends on how creative you are.

Another useful technique is by dedicating one hour of your day, preferably every day, to foster ideas. Set your timer to one hour and do nothing else but sit/stand, think and write. Do not get distracted by your phone/emails or any other circumstances. The important rule of thumb here is to test your mind. It will be very hard if you have not practiced mindfulness or have sat just thinking for that long about one question. It is profound what happens after 45 minutes of doing this your mind starts working like gears in a clock.

To bring out the creativity in you, you must put yourself in the element where you allow yourself to be creative. Our society puts roadblocks in the way from us getting to our inner creative child. An amazing book by David Usher called Let The Elephants Run, he gives great examples to how you can spark your creativity. You need to imagine yourself when you were young. The mind did not have any rules or restraints, at least not as many as you do now. You had the most wild imagination, you need to bring that back. By challenging yourself and manifesting a daily habit of thinking creatively and coming up with at least 10 ideas a day you work that muscle that we talked about into becoming useful.

Being creative takes courage, it takes standing out from the crowd, thinking outside the box. How can you better people's lives or the environment of which you live in. The best businesses are ones that solve real world problems.