Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is that mediocre ideas might lead to good ideas.
Speaker 1: Don't edit yourself for dismiss ideas as bad too soon.
Speaker 1: Let lots of ideas flow and then decide whether any
Speaker 1: of the ideas are workable. Sometimes you may come up
Speaker 1: with great ideas as you are looking at ones that
Speaker 1: are anything. But I'm sure many people listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast need to come up with ideas.
Speaker 2: All the time. Perhaps you work in a creative field
Speaker 2: and need to come up with content, or maybe you
Speaker 2: are coming up with new product ideas or ways to
Speaker 2: reach new clients or keep your employees engaged. Or you
Speaker 2: just have various problems and logistics in your life that
Speaker 2: you are constantly dealing with, or your friends and family
Speaker 2: expect you to plan wonderful adventures for them. A great
Speaker 2: idea seems obvious in retrospect, but breakthroughs tend not to
Speaker 2: just appear like a shaft of light coming down from
Speaker 2: the sky, weird as it may seem. Sometimes the best
Speaker 2: way to come up with a great idea is to
Speaker 2: generate lots of ridiculous ones. That is because the process
Speaker 2: of generating the ridiculous ones has your brain turning, and
Speaker 2: soon you start to make connections and come up with
Speaker 2: other ideas. You never know where the initial thought will lead,
Speaker 2: so rather than dismiss ideas out of hand, just get
Speaker 2: them down with an open mind and see what they trigger.
Speaker 2: For instance, maybe you and your college friends can't decide
Speaker 2: where to go for a long weekend together. People suggest
Speaker 2: ideas that others shoot down. You seem to be hitting
Speaker 2: an impact, but then you just decide to see how
Speaker 2: many possibilities you can come up with, even if they
Speaker 2: are ridiculous. Just to be funny, you throw out thirty
Speaker 2: six hours in Auckland. Someone mentions camping in the Everglades
Speaker 2: in August, But after that someone mentions Lake Como, and
Speaker 2: then you remember that you had a blast at a
Speaker 2: cabin on much more accessible like George. Once you realize
Speaker 2: that might actually work for a weekend together, bad ideas
Speaker 2: lead to a good one. Or perhaps you need a
Speaker 2: cat setter and your old one just moved away. Rather
Speaker 2: than edit yourself, just list any mediocre possibility. The neighbor
Speaker 2: who helps you out but is allergic to cats, your
Speaker 2: friend's teen daughter who just got her license but lives
Speaker 2: thirty minutes away. And then you remember that another friend's
Speaker 2: niece moved to town and is job seeking and might
Speaker 2: be excited to earn a little extra money while she's
Speaker 2: got some oop in time. I know I've had this
Speaker 2: experience with generating podcast ideas and book ideas. Book ideas
Speaker 2: in particular are challenging because the idea needs to be
Speaker 2: good enough to sustain seventy thousand words and my interest
Speaker 2: for two years of my life. But rather than waiting
Speaker 2: for the perfect idea, I come up with dozens of
Speaker 2: mediocre ideas and write articles about them and write podcast
Speaker 2: scripts about them and see what people say. If I
Speaker 2: get a lot of feedback about one, that might mean
Speaker 2: it's worth pursuing, or at least that a different angle
Speaker 2: might ultimately be workable. So if you are stuck on
Speaker 2: a difficult problem, generate as many possible solutions as you can.
Speaker 2: Don't evaluate the solutions as you think of them. Instead,
Speaker 2: just write them down, ones with potential, ones that would
Speaker 2: probably not work, ones that are downright ridiculous, and keep
Speaker 2: letting the possibilities flow. Often you will come up with
Speaker 2: a better idea this way because you'll be more open
Speaker 2: mind and creative about what could work instead of getting
Speaker 2: stuck on why things wouldn't work. Mediocre ideas lead to
Speaker 2: good ideas. It happens all the time. In the meantime.
Speaker 2: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 2: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
Speaker 2: please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows.