You know the feeling: you are in the shower, or walking the dog, or staring out a window, and a spark hits you. An idea. It feels exciting, a little scary, and totally new.
But within a few minutes, you feel dread, your brain automatically starts to generate a list of problems with it: someone else has done it before, if it was solvable it would have been already solved, I don’t have the time for this, it’s too complicated to build, what’s the point. Whether you are pitching a new concept to a room full of colleagues or just trying to convince yourself to paint on a Sunday afternoon, we are conditioned to immediately start looking for the problems. Problems steal the oxygen, killing any budding creative process.
Why do I always give up on my ideas so quickly?
You give up on your ideas quickly because you immediately focus on the problems, which suffocates the creative process. If an idea were fully resolved, it would be a finished product. It takes a determined effort to ignore the flaws, which are easy to articulate, and commit entirely to the partial, unlikely, imperfect idea.
Ideas are inherently fragile. If they were fully resolved, they would not be ideas at all, they would be finished products. In a creative pursuit, your duty is to the idea; you’re responsible for keeping it alive until it can stand on its own.
- Recognize what steals the oxygen: Pointing out why something won't work is easy, usually smart, feels productive, and - in a professional environment - is usually rewarded with nods of approval. But problems are easy and clear; and ideas are hazy, uncertain. The moment you switch your focus to the logistical issues, the problem sucks all the creative oxygen out of your brain (or meeting room).
- Accept the unlikely and uncertain: The very nature of a new creative thought is that it is incomplete and wobbly. You can’t ask a newborn concept to be fully fleshed out, standing on confident legs. Your job is to nurture the weird, partial fragments of the idea because that is where the magic actually lives.
- Quarantine the problems: It takes a determined, conscious effort to ignore a glaring flaw. When you are sketching out a new project and a problem pops up, write it down on a separate piece of paper and explicitly agree to walk away from it. You can figure out the budget, the software, or the audience later. Give the core idea the space to just exist first.
- Remember your duty: Your duty is not to be the critic; your duty is to be the collaborator. If you immediately greet your ideas with a laundry list of problems, they will turn around and leave.
Defend your ideas from the weight of immediate reality. Problems can always be solved later, but a suffocated idea is gone forever.