How to Boost the Thinking Process? Seven Tips to Enhance Idea Generation
How do ideas (both creative and useful) come about? What should you do to start the flow of ideas? How to catch” the right thought from this flow, which will give the expected result and will work for you?
While the process of generating ideas may seem random and somewhat mystical, there are simple and functional ways to increase your chances of coming up with good insights. Inite has put together a collection of tips to help you improve your thinking process and bring creativity to it!
Before we start: everything is connected
Everyone wants to come up with brilliant ideas, but have you ever wondered what an idea is? The answer may be simpler than you first thought: ideas are connections.
Any idea, even the simplest one, is an association between previously known concepts. Our mind is constantly forming such connections, mostly spontaneously and unconsciously.
Another exciting feature of these connections is that you can say nothing about them in advance. Often ideas are formed by merging two seemingly completely different concepts, produced unexpectedly or unusually.
Since the process of producing ideas is random, a straightforward approach is hardly possible here. The only way to increase the chances of creating a good idea is to increase the number of ideas available to form connections. Even the most ordinary thoughts serve as source material for higher-level ideas. The more ideas you have, the more material your mind has to match them and produce a good one. And all of our advice that follows is based on this concept.
1. Discover a wider experience
As the preface makes clear, inspiration is the process when the brain combines various known data that it has not yet recognized as connected.
Your openness and knowledge determine how far and wide your brain thinks and how many connections there are. Your thoughts are limited to your circle of awareness. You cannot develop ideas in areas you know nothing about, no matter how robust your idea-generation process is.
Your senses absorb information, which the mind then uses to make associations. The more you deal with different situations, people, and places, the more fuel you give your mind to form connections. Learn to welcome variety into your life: travel, try new foods, and read blogs you wouldn’t usually look at. Don’t be afraid to do familiar things differently.
2. Dream big
If you want to figure out how to make $10,000 — think about how to make a million (even if you are not yet very set on the life of a millionaire). Serious challenges boost the brain and force you to look for many solutions from which you can extract the most effective ones. Just dream, don’t compromise yourself and your imagination.
3. Allow for weird ideas
Often crazy fantasies can trigger creative breakthroughs and serve as an associative bridge to rational solutions. When we come up with silly and completely unrealistic ideas, we begin to think about what we really want to achieve without being distracted by limitations and possibilities.
This approach is especially important if you use mind-observation meditation (read more about brain-boosting meditative techniques here). You train yourself to observe your thoughts in a non-judgmental and dispassionate way — which means the brain begins to act boldly.
4. Follow fixed plans
Do you know why Thomas Edison patented over a thousand inventions? Because he practiced all the time. Every few days, he invented something small, and every several months he invented something outstanding. You can also set yourself a certain quota for ideas: for example, start with the habit of generating five ideas a day (excluding weekends, if you like). It doesn’t matter how outstanding the ideas are: you don’t have to develop them further if you lose interest in them. When you take this approach, you will collect tons of ideas in a few months. Most of them will be weird. Most of the rest will be average. But such an effort will lead to a few valuable ideas, and that’s all you need. Consider all failed thoughts as a catalyst for the ones that matter.
5. Warm up your brain
Want to think about an important question but don’t know how to approach it? Do some simple mental exercises! For example, play a game of associations (you remember that ideas are connections, right?). An example is Edward De Bono’s exercise of making associations between seemingly different topics and concepts. For example, choose four random words. Also, randomly come up with a criterion according to which one of the words is superfluous. Or just pick any subject and come up with five associations to it and then five definitions that it certainly is not. For instance, choose five words randomly: cat, river, window, cup, and wood. Think of a criterion for making one redundant. For example, the cat, sky, window, cup, and wood can be indoors, but the river cannot. Or for example, the four chosen words have one syllable, and the word “window” has two syllables. Keep practicing in the same way.
These simple techniques will boost your brain and set it up for work.
6. Consciously give your brain time to wander
It is necessary to consciously alternate the phases of focus and distraction. For “mental wandering,” such backgrounds as walking, running, meditation, and household tasks without focusing attention are suitable. But chatting, social networking, or watching videos will not work: during the mental wandering phase, it is desirable to cut down on new stimuli.
It is also important to remember that “deadlock” in solving a complex creative problem is a normal stage of its solution. The brain does not stall at this point but goes through the normal process of generating ideas. If you might not come up with a single thought for a few days, that’s normal. Ideas will begin to come suddenly, one after another, like a violent river. Don’t worry during natural downturns, but be ready to take full advantage of the flow of ideas when they come.
7. Write it down. Always
Whatever “weird” new idea pops into your head right now, it’s critical to write it down. Thought by thought, sentence by sentence. Don’t think about their logic, coherence, or beauty — just write. If you don’t write down ideas the minute they come up, you’re guaranteed to forget most of them-and even worse, you won’t know you had any ideas at all. Yes, maybe some of the written ideas are not valuable for you now, but imagine how you, for example, accidentally stumbling on your notebook, can connect an old idea with a new one and, bang, — so a new concept is born!
And, most importantly: every time the mind notices your attention to it, it rewards you with other insights.
Make your ideas count with Inite!
Inite is a tool that not only helps you follow the tips above but also rewards you for generating ideas! The app keeps track of the time you give yourself for silence and observation of your thoughts: this can be either mindful meditation or creative brainstorming. After the timer finishes its report — immediately write down everything that came into your head (only please, without cheating: an incoherent set of words will not pass). For each recorded idea, you get tokens, which can be used in-game mechanics or in the future to withdraw through the exchange. This way, you stimulate yourself to generate something new daily, constantly training your thinking, creativity, and awareness.
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