The Dumb Idea List

One of the best ways
to get the creative juices flowing
is to draft up a list
of crazy or ‘dumb’ ideas,
things so fantastical
that you’d never in a million years
develop them.

Why ‘waste time’ like this?

Robert I. Sutton
in
Weird Ideas That Work
shares
“Research by psychologists
suggests two sound reasons
for generating allegedly dumb and impractical ideas
(and then imagining they are smart):
To jolt people into questioning the existing dogma
and to generate counterintuitive ideas.”

“This technique is also promising
because it helps overcome
the ingrained human tendency
to reject the unfamiliar.
Once any human being notices something,
he or she can’t stop from evaluating it,
from having a positive or negative
emotional reaction to it.”

Evaluation is always deadly for creativity.
That’s why writers write first
and THEN edit.

Draft your dumb idea list.