How to have better, more creative ideas

A thread of wisdom from:
@TheSchoolOfLife
@david_perell
@anthilemoon
@joulee
@stephsmithio
& more

🧵👇

First, recognize that there are no new ideas.

Innovation is just rearranging existing concepts in a revolutionary way.

To get better at that, learn to combine your unique interests.

I wrote about this here:
https://t.co/sEwo0UXSLP
@david_perell offers a five step process for generating inspiration:

1. Gather raw material.

2. Work over them in your mind.

3. Let your subconscious mind process them.

4. Have a “Eureka" moment.

5. Shape and develop your idea — make it useful.

https://t.co/XNwci9CDwK
@anthilemoon suggests increasing your creativity by being prolific

Generate as many ideas as you can, as often as you can

Have a daily routine that primes your mind for creativity

https://t.co/OXhabGnGQY
@stephsmithio looks for a specific combination of traits in order to determine if an idea is worth pursuing

The criteria are:
- interesting
- doesn't exist in that exact form
- something she can uniquely contribute to

https://t.co/YkZHunlzen
@schooloflife warns us not to neglect the importance of doing nothing, of staring out the window for a while

Idle time gives your mind space to make connections

https://t.co/ihDECARO8J
The physicist Freeman Dyson echoes this advice:

"I am fooling around not doing anything, which probably means that this is a creative period, although of course you don’t know until afterward.

I think that it is very important to be idle."
Follow your curiosity.

As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his book Creativity:

"The first step toward a more creative life is the cultivation of curiosity and interest, that is, the allocation of attention to things for their own sake."

https://t.co/LnruT0IApy
The "cultivation of curiosity" means pursuing anything that intrigues you.

Follow an idea and see where it leads

It may be a dead end, or it may be life changing.
@joulee captures this experimental approach to creativity in two diagrams

The first is how we imagine the process of making something new

The second is what it's actually like
Lastly, remember Steve's jobs warning that ideas are fragile

Treat them with care:

https://t.co/GGpEqaCxnH
If you liked this thread, check out the one I did on great writing:

https://t.co/zSh04aNnj1

More from Ideas

The cold hard truth:

Why do companies like Quibi raise billions, while companies like Peloton get nothing?

Because fundraising is a GAME

And the insiders keep the rules to themselves.

Here are 100 tips the insiders don’t want you to see but will help you win the game:

1. You can’t play the game without nailing the basics.

There are 5 core ingredients to a startup pitch.

Most have 2.
Good ones have 4.
The best have all 5.


2. Now that you have a grasp of the basics, it’s time to level up.

Good news - most founders make the same mistakes as each other.

Bad news - these mistakes are really easy to make.

Here's what not to do:


3. Ok so you told me what not to do.

So what should I do?

Read below.


4. We’re in a really unique fundraising environment right now.

It’s important to contextualize all these tips in the “here and now” of what’s going on in the landscape.

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Tip from the Monkey
Pangolins, September 2019 and PLA are the key to this mystery
Stay Tuned!


1. Yang


2. A jacobin capuchin dangling a flagellin pangolin on a javelin while playing a mandolin and strangling a mannequin on a paladin's palanquin, said Saladin
More to come tomorrow!


3. Yigang Tong
https://t.co/CYtqYorhzH
Archived: https://t.co/ncz5ruwE2W


4. YT Interview
Some bats & pangolins carry viruses related with SARS-CoV-2, found in SE Asia and in Yunnan, & the pangolins carrying SARS-CoV-2 related viruses were smuggled from SE Asia, so there is a possibility that SARS-CoV-2 were coming from
Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.