The Fun, Lazy Path to Idea Generation

I know we’ve all read countless books and articles about what it means to be creative and how to achieve that “aha!” moment, but here’s another.

This one suggests that you simply walk away from your problems. I love it already.

Rather than sit and rack your brain, discuss the subject with others, and do the usual “brain turned off” activities like showering, driving, and sleeping, this article suggests leaving the subject matter entirely—just put it down and walk away.

The examples used here are more on the business side of idea generation, but any kindling of new thoughts is applicable to this process. When you have a set of refined skills, you may hit a point when coming up with ideas in which to apply those skills empties out. What do you do? Sit at your desk and contemplate the issue? No. You actually go outside, enjoy life for a bit, and reconnect with the social world. Talking with other people about their issues, watching movies, reading books, blogs, newspapers, and even sites like Reddit and Buzzfeed take your mind away from what you know and introduce a bit of flint from which to spark new ideas. It also advocates drinking as a source of mind relaxation for an inflow of new ideas. Cool, right? Meh, not really, but it’s a pretty nice alternative to thinking on a problem until your brain hurts just to go home and hope for a moment of inspiration while cleaning yourself.

To new ideas!

Distract Yourselves More Efficiently

So if your’re in advertising, I think it’s safe for me to assume that your curious mind soaks up all things interesting and it takes up a lot of your time. Let’s admit it, it can be quite distracting. You act like your listening to that boring lecture about how photosynthesis works, but you’re really on your laptop on Buzzfeed.

If you’ve been on Buzzfeed recently you’ll notice that there’s new feature tool sponsored by General Electric. It’s the Efficiency Machine:

A look at Buzzfeed’s interactive General Electric Efficiency Machine.

What it does it let you filter the content you receive on Buzzfeed, and tailor it to what you are most interested in. Now can get distracted more efficiently. The photo above shows the settings at its default, but you can choose what mood you would like to explore, pick the categories you are interested in, and boost up your content by adding Buzzfeed’s feed filters as well. Is it just me or does this remind you of a GE product. I think it’s a pretty cool function, I use it sometimes and it gives me what I want. Are others using it, I’m not sure. Procrastinate on writing your next blog, go check it out!