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The Secret To Coming Up With Good Ideas

Have you ever struggled to come up with a good idea?

I know I have. I often have a tough time coming up with content for this site. I wish there was some magical way of creating exceptional new ideas.

What if I told you there was a way? Here’s the secret…

All you have to do is come up with some bad ideas.

That may sound funny, but it is true.

In his book Linchpin, author Seth Godin explains that the best way to create good ideas is to allow yourself to generate bad ideas.

This is hard for us. We would rather freeze up and come up with nothing than take a risk on a perceived bad idea. Because after all, we don’t want to have our bad idea laughed at.

But if we really want to find good ideas, we need to allow ourselves to be laughed at. If we start turning down ideas because we think they might be bad, then we will miss the really good ideas that try to slip through.

Godin says, “All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you are unwilling to have lousy, lame and even dangerously bad ideas.”

What’s even more, most people can only come up with one good idea for every dozen bad ideas.

So I encourage you to start coming up with bad ideas. We have to work through all the rotten ones to find the brilliant one.  Write down your ideas, even if you think they are terrible. As Godin explains, if you do this exercise a lot you will discover that some pretty good ideas will start showing up.

 

 

 

Photo credit: Flickr