How to Generate Ideas Fast

Generating ideas can be tough. You may be asking the question; how can I generate ideas fast? The answer is simpler than you think.

How do you generate ideas fast?

Generating ideas boils down to three thigs: time, focus, and values. You need to have enough time to brainstorm the ideas you want to create; you also must dedicate blocks of time to generate ideas. You need focus to generate ideas in order to squeeze the best juice out of your mind, and you need values to generate ideas quickly so that your mind knows what it needs to create, and so it is not focused on other things.

Time

Time is the number one asset in idea generation. When you dedicate time and energy into generating ideas, many good ideas will come.

To properly generate ideas (and to do it quickly) You need to set aside blocks of time, around 30 minutes to an hour, of dedicated idea generation. To generate good ideas, set aside a time with just you, a pen, and a journal. To begin the process, relax your body and mind, and get ready to write. When you are ready, begin to think and write down ideas. The first ideas you write down will suck. They will suck a lot. But after you push through and dedicate more time to writing these ideas down, you will notice that they start to get good. The ideas become more complex, nuanced, and valuable. Setting aside this time allows your mind to push through the barrier of bad ideas and start generating good ones.

The reason this works is because your mind works in such a way that when it is given a destination, it will move toward that destination the best it can. Imagine your mind is like a homing missile. The missile makes corrections until it gets a clear path to its target. To make these corrections, the missile fails repeatedly. Another example of this is searching for a pen in a dark room. You have an objective, the pen, but the task is hard. You will repeatedly fail, but eventually, you will arrive at the objective. Without the target, without the objective in mind, your mind cannot fail forward and get where you want it to go. Setting aside time, with the goal in mind of idea generation, your mind will fail at first, generating bad ideas. Over time, however, your mind will correct the course it’s going on and arrive at the objective: valuable ideas.

Focus

Focus is the primary driver of idea generation. Without focus, your ideas will lack what is necessary to make them good ideas. With focus, ideas become more beautiful and valuable.

How do you focus?

To focus better on ideas, you must understand the concept of deep work and apply it in the process of idea generation.

To put it simply, you must of course set aside blocks of time, but these blocks of time must be distraction free, ruthlessly focused blocks of time. You must set aside all distractions and only have you and the paper, or you and whatever medium you’re expressing your ideas. At first, you’ll be in what I call the “mud”, which is essentially brain fog that you need to push through in order to get the best ideas. Once you begin to focus, you need to focus deeper, write down every idea, and focus deeper on every idea that follows. Eventually you will cultivate flow, and that flow will produce many profound and beautiful ideas.

I cannot describe it as the creator of the phrase himself, read Deep Work by Cal Newport to get this concept fully. Buy through this link (affiliate) if you’d like to support me with no added cost to you.

Values

Values are like a hidden secret in idea generation.

What are values, even? It’s like this word gets thrown around constantly and no one ever describes simply what values are.

Values are your priorities.

Values are what you love about life.

Values are your desired traits.

Values are what you consume, what media you partake in, what opinions you have, what arguments you get in. In short, values are what you stand for.

Values; however, are fluid and ever-changing. This means whatever you desire to be, you can shift your values to serve these desires.

The problem is your values are likely being thrown off by today’s society. Instead of valuing virtue, creativity, wisdom, and duty, you might value Mcdonalds and Netflix. It’s a sad truth, but it is the truth. You have values that you probably don’t want, but they’ve been imprinted into you by your animalistic self.

The good news is that you are the controller of your values. You choose what you stand for. What you stand for is what you do, and therefore you decide your course of action through your values. Don’t have motivation? Fix your values. Are you not getting any good ideas? Fix your values. Lost in life? Find some values.

Basically, values decide the course of your life, and similarly, your ideas. If you want x ideas but have y values, your concern should be to get x values so that you can get x ideas.

Discipline your values, you gain control over your ideas, and generate even more fruitful ones. I’d suggest taking a values assessment to understand you values and see where you’d like to change.

And changing your values is simple, it’s a matter of keeping your desired values in mind. Write them down, act on them, think with them, and be them until they become you.

What fast idea generation will look like:

You sit down. You’ve dedicated a 30-minute block of time to generate ideas. You have a notebook and pen in front of you, and your phone is put to the side, no screens around you, no music to interfere, no books, no people, no distractions around you. You recite your top values in your mind. You breathe deeply and calm your mind and let your values overcome you. You begin to write whatever ideas come to mind. You know the first few aren’t very good, but you keep writing. There are times where you blank and you cannot think of any ideas, but you focus deeply through these and fight through the mud. You cultivate flow, and fantastic ideas begin pouring out of you, you write them all down, so many ideas that you fill multiple pages. Your 30 minutes end and you’re happy with the result, and ready to act on some of these ideas.