Spark Ideas: Feed Your Creativity
By Jeremy Miller
Creativity is about smashing together disparate ideas and concepts. It's this act of making connections that leads to remarkable breakthroughs.
That's how Twitter was created. According to the Wikipedia history on Twitter, the idea gelled during a daylong brainstorming session. The board of Odeo, formerly a podcasting company, were looking for new business ideas. The passage goes on to say, "During the meeting, Jack Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group, a concept partially inspired by the SMS group messaging service TXTMob." The idea got kicked around and added to by the other board members, and soon it blossomed into something remarkable.
We're all capable of having remarkable ideas, but the question is what are we doing to spark them. Jack Dorsey's idea formed by drawing together his knowledge and experiences to solve a problem. He was aware of the various forms of technology and how other people were using them in interesting ways. By being exposed to these ideas he was able to create new ideas.
Feed your mind with new stuff
Imagine what your writing style would be like if you had only read one book in your life. It would probably be pretty close to that book, because it's your only point of reference.
Great writers are prolific readers. They have to be. The more they read the more source material they have to draw on. It keeps them fresh and exposed to various styles, structures and perspectives to convey their expertise artfully.
At its most basic level, creativity happens when you feed your mind new things. Each new experience builds on itself and helps lead to new ones. If you want to be more creative you have to be like a writer. You have to go out of your way to consume new knowledge and experiences from a wide variety of sources. The more you consume the better your ideas will be.
Challenge your perspective
Consuming more knowledge and wisdom will only take you so far. To really crack through to remarkable ideas you have to get out of your comfort zone. You have to challenge your perspective.
We have access to unprecedented levels of information today. We can choose to consume as much information as we desire from anywhere in the world. But one of the most disconcerting symptoms of all this information is you can spend all of your time consuming information that supports what you already know. Look at Fox News. It plays right into this trend. It caters to a very specific segment of the American population that wants to consume information that supports their world view.
Make a point to break away from your traditional sources of content, and try something new. I've recently begun subscribing to blogs from around Asia. Google Reader translates the content, and I get to read information I previously could never access. It's a little trickier to find them, but the process of searching is equally stretching. I often go to Google.jp or Google.cn and see what I can find. I use the Google Toolbar to translate the sites, and subscribe to whatever looks interesting. You never know what you'll find, but there are often gems in every outing.
Don't forget to chew your thoughts
How many ideas do you want? The more ideas you want, the more you'll have to feed your mind.
I suggest setting aside at least two hours per week to feed your brain. You'll want to break these periods up into two segments: consuming and digesting. Just like your stomach, your brain needs time to process the information it's consuming. For every hour you consume information, take an hour to digest it.
For me, reading is a primary source of information. I read two or three books a month, and several blogs a day. I take in a fair bit of information, but I'm always condensing and distilling it in my notebooks. I jot down quotes, make connections, journal and draw models to distil what I'm reading. It's a constant process, but it's essential. I need all of this source material for my business, for my consulting work and for my writing. If I don't fill the well, it will run dry.
Ideas drive our knowledge economy, and each and every one of us has an opportunity to contribute. It just requires smashing together disparate knowledge and experiences to spark new ideas. The question is what are you doing to feed your brain to spark new ideas?
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Jeremy Miller is passionate about sales and business development. He is a regular contributor to a variety of publications, and interviewed monthly on TV on the latest hiring trends. You can reach Jeremy at Jeremy.Miller@LEAPJob.com or 905.281.3090, Ext. 22.
Precision Recruiting
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