Mind Pumping

Pumping your mind is like making a path through tall grass. Originally there is no path, yet as you walk the same way each time, one appears. In the same way, you may have no idea at first, yet as you exercise your mind using these techniques, ideas appear. Eleven ideas that will encourage you to behave like an idea person.

IDEA QUOTA

Give your mind a workout every day. Set yourself an idea quota for a challenge you are working on, such as five new ideas every day for a week.

GETTING TONE

Fighter pilots say, “I’ve got tone” when their radar locks onto a target. That’s the point at which the pilot and plane are totally focused on the target. “Getting tone” in everyday life means paying attention to what’s happening around you.

Ordinarily we do not make the fullest use of our ability to see. We move through life looking at a tremendous quantity of information, objects, and scenes, and yet we look but do not see.

Paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous.

TINY TRUTHS

This exercise was designed by Minor White, who taught photography at MIT.

Select a photograph or picture that gives you pleasure, the more detailed the better. Get comfortable and relax. Set a timer or alarm for ten minutes. Look at the photograph or picture until the timer goes off, without moving a muscle. Stay focused on the image. Do not allow your mind to free-associate. Pay attention only to the image in front of you. After the timer goes off, turn away from the image and recall your experience. Review the experience visually rather than with words. Accept whatever the experience is for what it is. After your review and your experience becomes kind of a flavor, go about your everyday work, trying to recall the experience whenever you can. You’ll begin to experience tiny truths that you can find only by paying pure attention. Recall the experience frequently and recall it visually. Some think these tiny truths are the voice of God.

DUKES OF HABIT

Dukes of habit must always do things the same way, must have everything in its place, and are at a loss if something violates their routines. Don’t be a duke of habit.

Deliberately program changes into your life. Make a list of things you do by habit. Take them one by one, and consciously try to change them for a day, a week, or month, or whatever.

  1. Take a different route to work
  2. Change your sleeping hours
  3. Listen to a different radio station
  4. Read a different newspaper
  5. Make new friends
  6. Try different recipes
  7. If you normally vacation in summer, vacation in the winter
  8. Change you reading habits — non-fiction? Read fiction
  9. Change your break habits. Drink coffee? Drink juice.
  10. Change the type of restaurants you go to
  11. Change your recreation. Try boating instead of golf.

FEEDING YOUR HEAD

Creative thinkers read to feed their minds new information and ideas.

Select Carefully. Make the most of your reading time by sampling broadly and reading selectively.

Take notes. Comments. Marginal notes.

Outline. Read the first half, stop and write an outline of the latter half. Imagine what you will find before you read the ToC or the book.

Read biographies. They are treasure-houses of ideas.

Read how-to books on any subject. Read books on crafts, automobiles, carpentry, gardening, and so on. These books give you tools with which you can create unique ideas and products.

Read magazines on varied subjects.

Read non-fiction. Practice thinking up solutions to any problem presented in the book.

Think. Think as you read. Search for new solutions to old problems, changes in business, trends in foreign countries, technological break-throughs, connections, and parallels between what you read and your problems.

CONTENT ANALYSIS

Do your own content analysis.

  1. When travelling, read local news papers. What inferences can you make about local economy? What new business opportunities do you see? What are the area’s values, attitudes, and lifestyles?
  2. Actively observe popular culture. Who are the popular heroes. Why are they heroes.
  3. Think about how your job has changed. Has the corporate emphasis changed? More paperwork or less? More meetings or fewer? Where is the company heading?
  4. Attend as many business conferences, seminars, and lectures as you can

When you perceive trends and patterns of interest, begin to pump your mind for ideas, opportunities, and business possibilities. Look for connections and relationships between your content analysis and your business challenges.

BRAINBANKS

Collect and store ideas like a pack rat. Keep a container (coffee can, shoe box, file folder …) of ideas and idea starters. Begin collecting interesting advertisements, quotes, designs, ideas, questions, cartoons, pictures, doodles and words that might trigger ideas by association.

When you are looking for new ideas, shake up the container and pull out two or more items at random to see if they can somehow trigger a thought that might lead to a new idea. If not, reshuffle.

TRAVEL JUNKIE

Be a travel junkie. Whenever you are feeling stale or bored, go to a store, trade show, exhibition, library, museum, flea market, craft show, old folks home, toy shop, or high school. Pick up something at random and create connections and relationships in your mind with the object and your problem. Wander around with an open mind and wait for something to catch your attention. It will. Your mind is like a vegetation. It flourishes in one soil or climate and droops in another.

CAPTURING IDEA BIRDS

If you think it, write it.

THINK RIGHT

Consciously work to make your thinking more fluent and more flexible (fluency means the number of ideas, flexibility refers to creativity).

Flexibility in thought means the ability to see beyond the ordinary and conventional roles. It means you are more improvisational and intuitive, can play with context and perspective, and focus on processes rather than outcomes.

IDEA LOG

Maintain an idea log. Each section could be devoted to separate aspects of your business and personal life. Sections could include markets, product, selling, corporate, personal, services, special projects, and new business possibilities. Design your own organizer. Experiment with different methods of capturing ideas before you decide which is better for you.

Reviewing your recorded ideas is a good way to titillate your imagination. Each time you review them, you will begin to search out connections between a recorded idea and your present situation or experience.