Ideas, Ideas, Ideas (Blog 1B)

For class this week's class we read an article called "14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas" written by Mitch Ditkoff which can be found at ChangeThis.com (link to the PDF). 

In the article, Ditkoff presents many different ways to come up with ideas for creative people. The solutions all seem like valid ways to come up with ideas but still offers a broad enough spectrum to include many different people and the ways different people think. There are also enough different ideas to make it so that if one way doesn't work out, there is another one that you can try to see if it works out better for you. Throughout the article, many different points are given to show the pros of each method of coming up with creative ideas and at the end even gives you questions or suggestions to reflect on or enact in order to help you start becoming more effective at creative thinking.

The first method I will respond to is number two in the article. Immerse. Immersion is something that many people have done throughout time in order to be completely surrounded by a certain thing or idea. In this world of multi-tasking and everyone being “connnected” during every waking moment of their lives, being immersed or concentrated on any one specific thing seems like it might put you behind the curve because you are not focused on everything that you should be doing all at once. It may initially feel like you are getting less done at that time, but overall it will be a better outcome and you will reach that outcome quicker than you would have when distracted by other things. By immersion in any one specific topic, you have the ability to think just about that topic and when an idea comes to you, you are able to write it down immediately and build on it instead of trying to remember it at a later time. Many ideas are lost because we are so distracted by the many different things that we do in our day-to-day lives that we do not have the time to write down what we are thinking and even if we do, it is hard to come back to it in the exact same mindset we were in when we first came up with the topic. I use immersion to a certain extent when I’m working on projects of my own. The cell phone gets turned on silent, Facebook gets turned off, and my email gets ignored for a little bit. This allows me to just concentrate on what I’m doing at that specific moment and I feel like some of my better ideas have come out of these times because I have the ability do exactly what I have described above. Overall, I feel immersion is a very good way to dive deep into your thoughts and come up with ideas and then record those ideas to actually use and enact them.

The second method I will respond to is number four in the article.

Make new connections. This is an important method because each and every person you meet in your life will have something new to offer you intellectually. Even if they don’t have any new information, they may still be able to offer a new insight on an old topic or a new view on something you saw in a different way. Usually, people stick to what they know because it is easier and there is already a set path laid out for the way things are normally done. However, when time is taken to step outside the comfort zone there are many other paths that can be added on and many new things to be learned. I have been able to take this method to the next level by coming to college. All of the things that I thought I knew before have been completely reinvented and I was put in situations where it was not only necessary but almost unavoidable to meet new people, make new friends, and be able to experience all of their different points of view and thoughts. By making these new connections, each one opens you up to a completely new way of thinking and offers you insight to things that may have seemed foreign and distant up to that point.

The third and final method I will respond to is number eight in the article. Take a break. Even though working and thinking about a topic is important towards coming up with new ideas for it, sometimes you can get overworked and your brain isn’t able to come up with any new things. As a result you keep thinking the same things over and over again with nothing new. This can start to cause frustration or lead to being discouraged when working. Both of those are things that will inhibit creative thoughts instead of encouraging them. I practice this in my own life by not working on any one thing too long and have taught myself to take breaks when I am stuck on something or am having trouble coming up with new ideas. This seems to work very well and it allows me to be able to walk around and relax and talk to people more and not spend days cramming information all day just to forget most of it.

As the last part of the assignment we were asked to answer one of the prompts placed at the end of one of the fourteen methods for getting ideas. The prompt I am answering is from suggestion number nine, “What is the topic of your next group brainstorm? Who will you invite? Who will facilitate? When?”

I have been thinking about recording a show of sorts with short episodes to put out on the internet based on four college student’s lives and their day to day adventures. After reading this article I started to talk with some of my roommates and friends that live around me and we all are interested in doing something like this. The topic of the brainstorm will probably be ideas for the episodes and the different things we can have our characters do. I’ll invite the core group of guys I have already talked to and even open up the group a little more to some more friends so that they could also add their creative input to the project. We are currently planning on meeting later this week on Thursday or Friday depending on how everyone’s schedules work out and will plan on running a meeting to bounce ideas back and forth to see who is thinking what and how we can manage to pull something like this off.