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!

Dear Ikea, This is Why I Hate You

Dear Ikea,

This is why I hate you.

Walking into Ikea is walking into despair. Everything is fake: the rooms, the wood, the fabrics, the people. It’s an Eden of bad taste and sad suburban life. It’s migraine inducing.

As I come up the escalator straight from the sliding doors, I’m immediately immersed in a world of polyurethane and melamine bathed in a stark fluorescent white light of I’ll have mine with a side of stroke, please. As I watch those who are already making their way down the stairs to the storage room, or whatever the fuck you call that concrete enclosed chamber of vapid distress, their faces reflect the bleak experience I too am about to endure. If it’s a couple, they’ve had a fight; if it’s a family, the kids have been spanked; if it’s a person alone, better look for a body. I want to turn and run at this point, but oh wait, I’ve just come up the escalator of no-return. No going back now.

Once I’ve reached the second floor, I enter a sea of primary colors, synthetic textures, and overwhelming emptiness. The little yellow stripe centered within the narrow laminate walkway at my feet instructs me to follow it. Alright, Ikea. Do I really need an arrow on the floor and signs with directions hanging from the ceiling in order to navigate your store? Perhaps it’s time to consider a more intelligently designed layout. Just a thought. As I pass the chairs that remind me of my time spent in kindergarten and some tables that look like something out of The Jetsons, I start hating myself for this self-inflicted torment. Why is there no fast lane? I’m forced to pass through miles of chairs and tables and desks and beds and screaming children and confused foreigners and years of my life and all I wanted to do was look at some fucking TV stands. Here’s a suggestion, Ikea: sell single-use guns.

Oh, good. I make it to the TV stands. And even better, I didn’t have to maim anyone on my way here. Wait. The hell. I’m sorry, what? $179 for a two foot long, single-shelf, particle board, 25lb-maximum–weight TV stand? One hundred and seventy-nine US Dollars? Did you misplace the decimal by a digit or two? No? Oh. So you’re intentionally screwing me over. Well, that’s one more reason I hate you. Want another? I can’t even pick up the box of the TV stand I want to purchase now and proceed directly to checkout. I have to begrudgingly coerce my own two feet into continuing on through this hellish maze and pick it up somewhere else later. Rather than simply pick up the box, I instead have to write down its model number and what aisle and shelf it is located on downstairs and find it all over again. This is a joke, right, Ikea? Not only do we have to put all your shit together using multi-step instructions, but you make us purchase it this way too. This is insanity. Wow, I really hate you.

However, what I hate most about you is your so-called designs. Your single-cast chairs, your retro low couches, and your ergonomiceverything. It’s cancer of the eyes. What is it about this look that you think is so appealing? Oh, right, you call it Scandinavian design, minimalism, art. Well, here are some terms I use to describe it: Basic. Ugly. Shitty. Overpriced. Why would anyone want to pay $89 for a bar stool that is fire-engine red and made out of the same plastic used by Little Tykes to make their children’s toy cars? That’s bull shit. The bastards you employ as designers are out there making bets to see how cheaply they can make the ugliest piece and flip it for the highest dollar. I’ve watched the documentaries and How It’s Made. They brag about that shit. Assholes. And you encourage them, thus I hate you.

So, Ikea. While I hate you for everything that you are, I have to also hate myself just a little bit because I help sustain you by my own free will. I purchase your overpriced items and showcase them in my home. I am a consumer to your provision, and I have bought into the culture you project, which makes me hate you more, which makes me hate me more.  I am doomed to continue this circle of hatred for the foreseeable future until I can afford to buy into the consumer culture offered by Restoration Hardware and Crate&Barrel. Maybe someone will read this and make my dream come true (hint hint, nudge nudge), but that’s an empty delusion, not unlike the support ability of most of your pine-composite, hollow-legged, it’s like I’m leaning back into a rocky chasm dining chairs.

Pretty much sums it up.