How can you come up with something? How to come up with ideas. "Hunting" for ideas

If you need to get your work or project off the ground, develop a new direction and increase efficiency, both personal and throughout production, generate a new concept. If you want to radically change something in your life, plan something large-scale, generate new ideas. How? There are many ways to come up with something original and get amazing results. We offer you a selection of the most popular methods.

1. Brainstorm

The effectiveness of this technique has been confirmed by many. During brainstorming, you don't need to understand whether a goal is achievable or whether a particular problem is being solved. Initially, it is much more important to convey it to others in order to discuss together all the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and limitations, etc.

During a brainstorming session, first, absolutely all the ideas that come to mind are written down, even crazy ones - you generate something new, like a dreamer who has a limitless imagination. Then you think about each of the ideas like a performer - it doesn’t matter how complex or simple they are, the main thing is that you write down all the steps for their implementation and understand all the advantages. Nothing invented is discarded.

Only then, when the flow of ideas ends, do you become a sensible executor who determines how suitable this or that idea is for you or your company. This way, the most complex and ineffective decisions are discarded. As a result of brainstorming, as a rule, a couple of thoughts of medium complexity remain, which are as relevant and effective as possible.

2. Wish cards and mind maps

To start the process of change, to come up with something new, you need to imagine what you want - create a picture of your desires or record it on paper in the form of the so-called. mindmap. A picture of desires is magazine clippings and beautiful pictures that visualize your desires after fulfillment - a happy family, three children, a Labrador near the car, a slim body, pumped up muscles, etc.

A mindmap is a key idea or topic (for example, “finding a calling,” “increasing income”) centered on a sheet of paper with branches. These are minor ideas or steps to implement the main idea, which, in turn, can also have branches.

For example, you want to build a house. Write “house” in the center of the paper. To build a house, you need (make separate branches on the sheet from the word “house” for each sub-idea) - create a layout, select a team of builders and architects, a place and materials for construction. Or maybe you intend to build it yourself? Each branch expands with detail and you see the entire process of creating a house.

Everything you want should be in front of your eyes - this way you can make changes, add or remove something, and understand where you are missing an intermediate link in implementation. An important point - after creating a mindmap, be sure to take the first tiny step towards the goal that you have defined for yourself.

3. Two in one

The essence of the method is to implement the characteristics of one object in another. To do this, he takes two ideas/objects that are not directly related to each other, and begins the search for how to implement the properties of a non-key object in a key one. Using this principle, shopping bags were created that, when folded, look like a strawberry. Here such characteristics as brightness, shape and the unambiguous attractiveness of the berry for a female audience were used. Or, for example, remember tea bags that look like people and animals taking a bath.

You can combine different features, and in this way you can find different solutions to a specific problem and choose the optimal one. On the one hand, this is a warm-up for the brain, on the other, you learn to see the hidden, find and apply non-obvious associations in your work.

4. Dissection of the whole

The essence of the method is to divide an object or general idea into several parts. All parts are analyzed separately to identify one or more strong or non-obvious characteristics. Thanks to this, you either get a new, more specific and bright idea, or you collect the discovered features into a new object or idea with a cool set of properties and details. You can do the same when solving one big problem - the best solutions to each specific small problem become a common path to achieving the goal.

5. Selling sand in the desert

The task is simple - you need to sell something, of which there is a lot and, in fact, no one needs it. For example, there is snow in winter, and sand in the desert. A frivolous, at first glance, game will turn on your imagination and push you to unusual solutions. If you play it often, you will notice that you find interesting approaches even to ordinary things. It may be difficult for you to figure out what to sell and to whom - connect your friends, write to yourself 10 likely objects to sell and practice whenever you want.

6. Invention of the wheel

It seems that everything in the world has long been invented. But no. Train your brain by perfecting one detail, part of an object or idea. So, take a problem that has been tormenting you for a long time, and those solutions that have already been proposed - and “finish” one of them. Perhaps what you once came up with is quite suitable today, both for the same problem and for a similar one.

7. Hunt for ideas

A person's working memory cannot capture all the fleeting ideas that arise during the day. In order not to forget anything, write down interesting thoughts and important details - on a voice recorder in your phone, a notepad, or just on pieces of paper. At the end of the day, collect them in one place and analyze them. Surely, you have already thought of something very original today.

8. Six hats

The essence of this method is simple: trying to come up with something impressive, a person takes turns putting on imaginary hats of different colors. This divides the thinking process into six modes. You can try on hats yourself, or distribute imaginary hats among the discussion participants.

So, white hat means analyzing all the facts and figures on a particular issue, and also checking whether there is enough information to generate a particular decision. Black – search for negative characteristics of the issue under discussion, yellow – analysis of positive features, green – generation of new ideas, modification of an existing idea, red – emergence of a bright emotional coloring, expression of emotions related to the topic of discussion. And the blue, last hat, is worn to sum up each stage and summarize the entire work. This mechanics allows you to quickly organize the process of generating a new idea, obtain a variety of objective results and introduce a game aspect into the analysis.

Creative- an overseas word, in Russian it is often translated as creativity. Derived from the English word create/creation - to create/create. Accordingly, creativity is not the property and property of only artists, poets and musicians. As a person’s ability to create something significantly NEW, different from what already exists, creativity is the essence and key to the success of each specific business. Forgive me for the generalization, but everyone in an organization should be “creative” - from the cleaner to the TOP manager, each mainly in the direction of their work tasks.

Markets and products change quickly, created and disappeared in just a couple of years, and sometimes even months. The company's new strategy has a chance of implementation only with the coordinated creation of NEW products at each organizational level of the business. The owner's new ambition is transformed into a new company product, new production technologies, new forms of packaging, new logistics systems, and new approaches to people management. Everything new is unique for a very limited period of time - competitors and antimonopoly committees do not allow us to enjoy our uniqueness for a long time.

But how we love to tell the client that we have prepared a unique commercial offer for him! And then we try to justify this very uniqueness to him. Colleagues, the uniqueness should be obvious! I am now consciously missing such important characteristics for business as applicability, economic feasibility and other criteria that, according to common sense, should accompany uniqueness. Here and now my task is to slightly shake up your interest in the ability to create something new, to create.

It's time to move on to our earthly tasks, namely creating a unique commercial offer. They say that every moment of communication is, in essence, the process of selling yourself. The term “commercial offer” also makes sense to be understood quite broadly. Any message you send to others is commercial. Others must, as it were, “buy” it.

Below are the principles for CREATING a business proposal. However, these principles are universal and can be applied to the creation of a new product or idea. But, even if you already have a product, an idea or the essence of a commercial offer, it makes sense to apply these principles here too - at least to create a new attractive “packaging”.

These principles are not so much techniques as basic settings that help in shaping the result. So.

Principle 1: There is no right solution.

When creating something new, we must “relax our brain” and stop worrying about the existence of some correct solution that we do not know. The very task that you have set for yourself - to create NEW - already presupposes the absence in the present of a solution prepared and tested by anyone. This principle leads us to rethink the concept of “right.” Of course, there is a correct solution, or rather there will be in the future, but it will be found by you.
If you manage to accept this principle, then you will free yourself from the fear of making a mistake - for example, due to your alleged ignorance of “correctness”.

Principle 2. Formulate ideal final properties.

Any solutions, commercial offers, any products are unique only if they have distinctive properties (or unique consumer properties, if we are talking about a product). If there are unique properties, then there is a unique offer.

Why is it so important to formulate the ideal final properties? Because it is often difficult to predict in advance what will be the content (elements, parts, services) of the “commercial offer”, but you must understand what properties your future creation should have. This allows you to clearly define the direction of searching for solutions and avoid empty trial and error. The image of final ideality provides clear criteria for setting, adjusting problems and evaluating the solutions found. So, the essence of the principle is properties first, and only then content.

Principle 3: Become a Figure in the Background. Find a way to stand out.

Regardless of what exactly you want to create, a unique product or solution, it can be classified according to related properties and assigned to a specific group of products, services, or inventions as such. By placing our product or offer in a group of our own kind, we want the uniqueness of our offer to be obvious and clearly noticed by our target audience.

To implement the third principle, you need to thoroughly study the properties of what will act as your “background”. Study the characteristics of other offers that compete with you for audience attention. In essence, this is what advertisers usually call “detuning” from competitors. And you can use your competitors as a background if you have studied them well. This is why insider information is so expensive.

Principle 4. Combine incompatible things. .

The lion's share of all emerging new unique solutions, inventions, and concepts are formed by combining and interacting certain properties that were not previously related to each other functionally or even thematically. To implement the fourth principle, human experience has accumulated many methods and approaches, only some of which we will name: synectics, bisociation, metaphorization, analogy, etc. All of them, one way or another, are united by a common detail - to find a new solution to a problem (problem), it is necessary to go beyond the scope of the area in which this problem arose, or to introduce some properties from extraneous areas of knowledge and practice into the starting conditions of the problem.

The following pattern often appears: the more diverse your (or your team’s) knowledge, the more solutions you can develop. The consequence of this pattern is that many companies, whose success is based on innovative developments, have stopped pinning their hopes only on their “pocket” creative and design services, but have begun to take their unsolvable tasks outside the corporation, offering to brainstorm for everyone in exchange for reward. And it turned out that this approach quickly bore fruit; many problems that had not been solved over the years by professional engineers and creatives were suddenly solved by strangers, who often lived on another continent.

Principle 5. Don't be better - become different.

The essence of the fifth principle is to distinguish your future self from your present self. Many of us have been trying for a very long time and in vain to create something new, trying to change what we have, improving what we already have. Become even smarter, kinder, more sociable, etc. Yes, such improvement results in some changes, but often minor ones. If you want to achieve a truly qualitative leap, a transition to a new level of development in anything, in personal growth, in financial well-being, in business indicators, then you will have to find a way to become different.

To become qualitatively different means to bring into yourself, into your product, into your commercial offer, something that was not there before. And sometimes you don’t need to add, but on the contrary, remove something from an already existing set of qualities, and then you get a new product of your creation.

The most difficult transformations are personal. But they are the most fruitful. If you manage to become different, this will very quickly affect the innovativeness of the proposals, products, and thoughts that you produce.

Develop your creativity, knowing that the ability to create is not only a divine gift and the destiny of innate talents. Technologies for developing creativity and developing new ideas for business can and should be mastered, especially in today's realities.

I would like to conclude my recommendations with the words of the most versatile and prolific creative artist of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, who said: - “If you want to develop your mind, study the science of art; study the art of science; learn to see the world holistically; understand that everything is interconnected".

People engaged in creative work know that such activity requires new ideas, but it happens that all past insights have already been exhausted, nothing new comes to mind, and for some reason the creative muse is in no hurry to visit us. Fortunately, this situation can be corrected, because who else but creative people can come up with methods to combat creative crisis? We offer their experience and achievements to you.

Brainstorm

The author of the method is Alex Osoborn. This method involves group work. During brainstorming, the group proposes different ideas, at the same time, the participants in the process try to develop the proposed ideas, analyzing them and identifying the advantages and disadvantages of a particular idea.

Six hats

The author of the method is Edward de Bono. During the creative process, you take turns wearing six hats of different colors. hat - analysis of accurate information, such as numbers and facts, hat - search for negative aspects, hat - analysis of positive aspects, - generation of new ideas, and finally, the hat is put on to allow emotional reactions. The hat is put on when you need to take stock.

Mind maps

The author of the method is Tony Buzan. The theoretical basis of the method is the relationship between memory and the creative process, so the emphasis here is on memory. Tony suggests writing a keyword in the center of the sheet, and writing all associations that arise on the branches that go from the main keyword. Associations also need to be remembered. It is allowed to record associations in any convenient way, including drawing various pictograms or simply drawings. Such a card helps to create new associations, and its image is well remembered.

Focal object method

The author of the method is Charles Whiting. Using this method we combine the characteristics of various objects into one. For example, we have a candle and New Year. New Year is a holiday, fire is bright, we combine and get sparklers, sparkler powder can be added to candle wax and get a sparkling candle and so on. You get the point.

Morphological analysis

Auto method - Fritz Zwicky. The object under study is decomposed into components, among which the most significant characteristics are selected. These characteristics are modified and then put together. As a result, we get a new object. For example, we take any inspiration and concentrate on any object from the surrounding world. We change the geographical characteristics and we already get something that is located in a different place. We change various features further and eventually get a completely new object. In general, you get the point.

Indirect Strategies

The authors of the method are Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno. Here a deck of cards is used, which must first be made. The cards depict various commands, for example, “find a solution around the corner,” “release your anger,” “look out the window,” and so on.

Bus, bed, bath

The basis of the method is the conviction that new ideas not only need to be retrieved from the depths of the unconscious, but also given the opportunity to break out on their own, that is, not to interfere with their emergence. Ideas usually don't take much into account what we're doing, but we may not take ideas into account very much when we're busy with something. You need to make a choice in favor of ideas and start noticing them at the most “inopportune” moments.

Decoding

We take any incomprehensible inscription or any one and begin to unravel it. In the process of immersing yourself in or inscription, a variety of ideas and associations will begin to appear.

Dedicated to the topic of the birth of ideas: from the history of insights that radically changed human life, to the mechanisms of thinking and methods of generating ideas in the modern world.

Video recording of the lecture

Who am I and why do I have the audacity to talk about how your brains work? I worked as a creative director for fifteen years, and my job was to come up with something every day. At some point I got tired of it and decided to do reflection. Because I think the main difficulty with thinking is that you can't think and think about how you think at the same time.

This is physically impossible. This can only be done in hindsight. Try to understand how an idea comes to your mind. This is actually a very exciting process. I spent quite a lot of time figuring out how ideas come into my head. And I came to several fundamental conclusions, for which I am entitled to a Nobel Prize.

The most important conclusion is that we all think the same. We all have exactly the same functioning of the digestive system, respiratory system, nervous system, circulatory system, limbic system. There is no reason to believe that separate brains were selected for each of us.

And I don’t know about you, but this really inspires me. The very idea that my brain is no different from Richard Feyman's brains (American scientist, one of the creators of quantum electrodynamics - website), I love.

I understand that my only difference from Feyman is that I thought and quit, and Feyman continued to think

Actually, what is thinking from my point of view. There is such an author - Tatyana Chernigovskaya. Maybe you listened to it. I don't like her very much. I don’t like her because she carries syncopated nonsense - the kind from which nothing follows. Her thoughts are jumping chaotically: she starts talking about God, about the fact that the brain is the most complex device in the universe and other nonsense.

As a result, the output is some kind of water, and you don’t understand what follows from this - it seems like you listened to a lecture, but it seems like you understood absolutely nothing. From my point of view, there is no mystery in human thinking. The brain is incredibly primitive, and the only way we can come up with new ideas is by trying out options. All. There is nothing other than a selection of options.

Simply put, we can get out of our head only what we put there by regrouping it a little and changing places. The conclusion follows from this: as soon as you come across (absolutely no matter in what area) some new bright idea, your task is to steal this idea and figure out what is good about it.

Once you figure out how this idea works and why it’s so cool, consider it to be a part of you, and another mechanism has been added to your constructor. The fact is that the number of thinking operations in itself is very small - they can practically be counted on one hand. And you may ask: how were all these things around us created if the number of variations is so limited?

From my point of view, the best metaphor is music. There are only seven notes, but the number of melodies is endless. Or a designer. You can have a lot of sets, there are also a lot of parts in them, but there are few ways to connect them.

I will try to expand on the topic in more detail. But first, a few words about where we are. To oversimplify it, we are in a mess. Complete and absolutely hopeless. But are there people here who are scared? For example, I am scared of what is happening now.

It's scary not because we're all going to die. The Chinese have a saying: “God forbid you live in an era of change.” It comes from the old days of the agricultural cycle, when a peasant could, up to 12 years old, learn all the basic agricultural operations, all the signs, and then live his whole life using this baggage.

Sowing, taking care of the crop, harvesting the crop, digging worms out of the ground and, in fact, processing the crop. Every year everything was repeated. And then the concept of completed higher education was still legitimate.

I think you can forget about this nonsense: education can only be incomplete. Now the absolute norm is to receive a new education every five to seven years. Because with a high degree of probability you will all change jobs. I'll try to explain why.

The fact is that we are now in the most unpleasant moment of the fourth industrial revolution. It is unpleasant because the speed has already been gained and further changes will occur incredibly quickly. I will talk very briefly about the first three revolutions, namely what they led to.

The first is the industrial revolution: steam, cast iron, the spinning jenny and the like. She radically changed the world. Industrialization began, people began to move from villages to cities.

Somewhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the second industrial revolution swept the world. Steel, electricity, conveyor belts - all this completely changed the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, 80% of Americans were farmers and struggled to feed themselves.

Today, US agriculture is the largest in the world. Maybe Kiselyov said that Americans produce nothing but dollars. This is wrong. America is the largest (including agricultural) power. The country produces slightly less than 20% of all food in the world.

And if at the beginning of the 20th century 80% of the population was doing this with much less results, today less than 3% of farmers, along with hired Mexicans for harvesting, make up farmers. From this, by the way, it follows that the communist thesis about the unity of the peasantry and workers simply does not work. There are only a few farmers left, and the number of workers is sharply declining.

In the 50-60s of the 20th century, the third industrial revolution began, which was associated with space, nuclear energy, the first computers and the emergence of transnational corporations. This changed the world very much, including collapsing the economy of the USSR - our country simply became uncompetitive.

And finally, the fourth revolution is now underway, which, it seems to me, is stronger than all the previous three combined. These are the Internet, cellular communications, neural networks, artificial intelligence and GMOs (which, in fact, saves humanity).

Look at the two photos above. The first shows Fifth Avenue in 1900. The only car is highlighted with a red circle - everything else is horses. The second photo shows Fifth Avenue 13 years later. The horse is highlighted in a circle, and everything else is cars.

In the States, the most popular profession is truck driver. These drivers have families numbering about ten million. There are also small towns through which the route passes, with motels, gas stations, restaurants and brothels. These industries rely on drivers. That is, all these people will become unnecessary, because there are already systems that work perfectly without a driver.

But the problem does not only affect drivers - it affects everyone. The same thing happens in the maritime industry. Ships without a crew are already being tested. Before our eyes, the last few “defense lines” that seemed unshakable to us are falling.

It all started with chess. Everyone said that chess is a science combined with art, and therefore a machine can never compare with a person in this regard. After chess, the same thing was said about the game of Go. The number of possible moves in it is greater than the number of atoms in the Universe, so it was believed that it was impossible to calculate this “tree”.

And what’s most interesting is that even now we don’t understand how a computer learns to play Go. In fact, he plays millions of games against himself and thereby hones his skills. The next line of defense was poker. It was believed, well, chess and go are games with complete information. But poker is psychology, bluffing, an opportunity to push with money, and so on. But people are not competitive in this either.

Just a few years ago, the average holding time per share was about four years. A person invested money and after four years decided whether to sell or not sell this share, and the bank trader made about 50 transactions a day regarding purchase and sale.

Today, in some markets, the average time to hold shares is four seconds, and one trading robot performs approximately 10 thousand buy-sell transactions per second. Do you understand that we are simply not needed?

The little ball in the photo above is a Japanese robot that floats on the ISS. It is controlled from the Earth, weighs one kilogram and performs about 10% of the work of the entire crew.

Do you know how the war in Afghanistan is going now? In Nevada - on the other side of the globe - employees come into the office, sit down at the monitor and start controlling drones. They fly over the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, search for the Mujahideen and destroy them at the command of operators from the Earth.

Of course, there may be situations where the connection is lost. The dushmans also learned to use microwaves and interfere. In this case, the drone, on command, makes several circles, trying to find a connection, and then returns to the base.

But while he is flying to the base, he has an automatic target search program running. So this program is much more effective than any gunner operators. The drone kills people, it distinguishes the “good” from the “bad” and kills the conditionally bad ones much more effectively.

Another example: during the Franco-Prussian War at the end of the 19th century, it took 1,300 bullets to kill one enemy soldier. Do you think this figure has decreased over time? During the Vietnam War, it took 200 thousand bullets to kill one enemy soldier; today in Afghanistan - 300 thousand bullets.

There are such concepts as barrage fire, warning fire, area fire, and so on. Can you imagine how much it costs to kill one enemy? The sniper is the elite of the elite. To train one good sniper, you need to spend several years of hard training and shoot a carload of ammunition. Special units work for one sniper. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, there’s a movie called “Sniper” about an American sniper in Vietnam.

I’ll briefly tell you the plot: this sniper died, and his wife, who has nothing to do with military affairs at all, took this place. She is blind and works as a programmer. She was armed with a special smart rifle, which itself determines the enemy, the direction and strength of the wind, the number of charges in the cartridge, and even tells the person behind the other that it’s time to pull the trigger.

This rifle was given to a woman who has no experience, well, maybe knows how to pull the trigger. And they held an open competition between her and the US sniper shooting champion. As you can imagine, it was a rout. The American champion hit 58% of the targets, and the blind girl hit 100% of the targets with a rifle.

We are uncompetitive, we are forgetful, we operate with a very small amount of information. Our performance is no good at all.

Another extremely serious resource is “big data”. With the help of big data, human behavior can be predicted with very high accuracy. Recently in St. Petersburg they were looking for a serial killer and could not find him - he left no traces at all.

Then someone came up with a bright idea: we know several areas in which the murders were committed, and we know the approximate time of the crimes. Let's sift through all the phone numbers: was there anyone who had a phone in all these locations at a certain time. Thus, the killer was identified.

Facebook conducted a study of 86,000 volunteers last month. These people completed a 100-question questionnaire. Facebook had the only source of information about a person - the likes that he gave. So, according to the data obtained, a person only needs to put ten likes on something he likes on the Internet, after which Facebook can predict his behavior.

Today, the average Facebook user leaves 270 likes, and this number is constantly growing. Perhaps the social network knows more about your behavior than your immediate family.

Basically, I just want to scare you. While our country is crushing Polish apples with tractors, a huge wave is approaching us. It’s even difficult to describe how different the world will become. From my point of view, such a concept as “pension” will disappear. But it will be replaced by an unconditional income, because this is the only way to avoid food riots.

Now let's finally move on to the topic of thinking and how people think. I want to tell a story about the first Superman in the history of European literature, who appeared before James Bond, Spider-Man and even before Sherlock Holmes. This is Rocambole. The author of "Rocambole" was the literary black Alexandre Dumas (referring to the popular French novelist Ponson du Terrail - website), who wrote several novels for him.

The story about Rocambole was published in parts, in paperback, and all of France was waiting for the continuation. Rocambole got into incredible troubles, came out of them brilliantly, fenced, seduced - a kind of James Bond of the 19th century. The only problem was that the rights to Rocambole belonged not to the author, but to the publisher.

As Rocambole's popularity grew, the author's appetites naturally also increased; he wanted to receive more money. The publisher at some point decided that he was paying the author too much, and anyone could generate such nonsense in industrial quantities.

Then he said to the author: “My friend, I had a very good time with you, but now you are finishing your last novel and we are saying goodbye. You can’t kill the hero, and a few hungry journalists will write a sequel for three times the price.”

“Okay,” said the author of Rocambole. And the last book about the adventures of Superman ended this way: the pirates caught the brave Rocambole, tied him hand and foot, locked him in a steel cage and threw him into the sea. And that’s it, the author left, and all of France froze in anticipation. Everyone became interested in what would happen next; the hero couldn’t die like that.

Then the budget successors got down to business, and they came to a dead end. Rocambole had to be saved somehow, but how to save him was unclear, because everything they offered was no good.

And a week after all these futile attempts, the publisher gave up: “Dude, forgive me, I got carried away. I'm attractive, you are damn attractive. Let us be best friends, I agree to your terms, save our guy, because France is waiting.”

A new edition is coming out. Readers excitedly open the sequel and see: “Rocambole, who had emerged from the deadly abyss, swam to the shore with confident strokes.” All. At this moment, everyone thinks the same thing: “Was it possible?”

So, from my point of view, the most important condition for productive thinking is courage. Maybe you remember the story about the man who traded a paperclip for a house. In my opinion, in just nine operations a year. Was that even possible? Or about how the guys bought a website with 1000x1000 pixels, began selling each for a dollar, and then earned $1 million. Was that also possible?

The fact is that the pressure of society on us is so great that we are all cowards and opportunists. We are very similar in our way of thinking. There was an experiment with a hungry chicken, a transparent fence and food. All the chicken had to do was run around the fence on either the left or right side.

But the chicken took a few steps in one direction, then looked and thought, “I’m moving too far away from the food,” and returned and took a few steps in the other direction. Our brains work much the same way. But Bill Gates once said it well: “If no one laughs at your idea, it’s not good enough.”

There is a very good exercise for thinking: always doubt the obvious, that which no one doubts. As a rule, this is where the fun lies.

For example: there is such a type of transport - a trolleybus. For some reason, you can only enter the trolleybus through the front door, and this takes a very long time, because the passenger puts on his bag, his sensor does not work, he turns the bag over, some grandmother meanwhile buys a pass from the driver, the queue grows, everyone swears.

And there is another type of transport - a tram, in which you can enter any door. I can’t even imagine what a titanic effort of thought would be required to take a risk and borrow the “tram” experience and apply it to a trolleybus. And so it is in absolutely everything.

There are family doctors in China who only get paid when their client is not sick. As soon as a person gets sick, it means that the doctor is not doing his job well. Can you imagine him running after his client? “Dude, you sit a lot. It seems to me that you need to move more, let’s review your diet.”

Imagine that we introduce the same system for road workers. The guys will start receiving money only when there are no potholes on the road. Do you think these people will continue to lay asphalt in the rain? Don't stop questioning the obvious.

We all studied under the so-called Prussian education system. All the children sit silently; until the teacher asks, they remain silent. And the worst thing is that until the dumbest person understands, the class does not move on. And this is a monstrous disaster, because in fact the only resource that a person has is his time. And it is spent very stupidly at school.

You can complete the entire school curriculum without extra stress in two years. You cannot limit the maximum learning rate. Schools should dictate only the minimum speed: if a child is good at mathematics, let him be in the eleventh grade in mathematics, and let him be on par with the rest in singing.

Another terrible habit that is instilled in school is punishment for mistakes. If you think that you can’t handle a child without punishment and bad marks, then I’ll tell you that people thought the same thing who believed that if a child is not spanked in class, then he will not study.

The fact is that the only way to learn new things available to a person is to consistently make mistakes. What is an experiment? This is when you consistently make one mistake after another. You come up with a theory and then try to test it. Not everyone has the patience, like Edison, to do ten thousand experiments to find a spiral for a light bulb, but mistakes should be rewarded.

How does a good scientist differ from a charlatan? If a good scientist has some kind of hypothesis, then, first of all, he will look not for examples that confirm the hypothesis, but for examples that refute it. because there are any number of supporting examples.

Our tiny brain weighs about one and a half kilograms (give or take). It consumes up to 20% of the body's total energy. Thinking is very expensive. That is why a person tries to do everything without thinking. That is, he once figured out how it works, and continues to perform all such actions automatically.

I hope the future is to translate learning into play. Because a person can work hard and diligently for only a short time, but he can play endlessly. I have read a huge number of books on the technology of thinking, but nowhere have I come across the simple idea that the most important thing in the thinking process is you yourself.

Because you need to think, you need to solve a problem. Therefore, you must know how to put yourself in the right frame of mind. How, for example, does an amateur differ from a professional? An amateur can produce very good results if the work inspires him, if the stars align correctly, if he is in a good mood.

And a professional always gives a good result - regardless of whether he had a fight with his wife, whether his daughter’s hamster died, or whether his tooth hurts. The basis of professionalism is knowing yourself well. Know what gives you pleasure.

There was a German industrialist Krupp who brought Hitler to power. He was very inspired by the “smell of nature” - that’s what he called the aroma of manure. He even installed special ventilation into his office from the stables. And Agatha Christie, for example, hated washing dishes.

She did not understand why she, a great writer, should spend her time scrubbing grease off plates. And so when she needed to come up with a particularly sophisticated murder, she started washing the dishes. And her hatred for this activity transformed.

Since we are not very different from animals - in fact, we are animals - then such a thing as food reinforcement works very well for us. In other words, if you have something that you really like to eat - for example, some kind of chocolate - then put it in front of you, but do not touch it until you solve the problem.

And when you do solve it, firstly, this chocolate bar will seem much tastier to you than usual, and secondly, the most important process will take place in your head: between the center responsible for solving the problem and the organs responsible for pleasure, a connection will be established. Your task is to strengthen this connection in every possible way, because as soon as you begin to enjoy difficult things, your performance will increase dramatically.

Americans have the so-called “three B rule”. They believe that all brilliant ideas were invented in just three places: the bus, the bed and the bathroom. I encourage you to know what time is most productive for you and protect it, because then you will enjoy working.

However, I think there is one more brilliant thing missing from the list - walking. A huge number of ideas were simply thought up on the fly, when a person was just walking somewhere. Therefore, often to solve a problem you shouldn’t sit still, it’s better to get distracted and take a walk, while your brain will continue to work.

By the way, another good example is a traffic jam. For a modern person, this is a unique opportunity to be alone. During this time, you do whatever you want: listen to audio books, listen to music, think about anything. If you boil, you won't get there faster. It's a simple idea that through willpower you can make yourself a much happier person.

There is a classic example given by Adam Smith. This example at one time greatly influenced Karl Marx and, among other things, inspired him to write Capital. There was such a thing as a large safety pin. In those days, it was extremely necessary on the farm, but expensive.

Because to make one pin it was necessary to perform 18 operations: stretch the wire, chop the wire, sharpen the wire, bend it - in general, the process is not fast. A good craftsman could make up to 20 pins in a day. This is not enough, which is why they were so expensive.

And then an amazing experience was carried out. 18 masters were selected and each was given to perform only one operation. It would seem that at school we were taught that rearranging the places of the terms does not change the sum. What difference does it make: 18 multiplied by 20, or 20 multiplied by 18 - the output will still be 360.

Imagine the surprise of those present when, by the end of the working day, 18 craftsmen had made not 360, but 48 thousand pins. Such a simple experiment led to the appearance of the conveyor belt - in fact, the most inhuman thing in the world. Because forcing a person to perform the same operation throughout his life is, in my opinion, a crime.

Why did I tell this story? Because I wanted to do the same with the thinking process. I wanted to break down everything our brain can do into very simple operations. And I came to the conclusion that there are much fewer of them than 18.

Adding 1+1 is an example of a simple thinking algorithm. Imagine we have a subset of whales and a subset of sharks. At some point they intersect, and this intersection gives us whale sharks. This idea of ​​adding two realities is very effective. Now I will explain.

In Moscow there is such a store “Respublika”. At one time it started out as a bookstore, then book sales fell, and entrepreneurs began selling basically everything there. Including a lot of all sorts of Chinese, creative crap. They even have bubblegum magnets, and I know people who think that's a cool idea.

I'll explain now: it works on the principle of two intersecting circles. Imagine that you are a company that produces these magnets, and you need to somehow diversify your product range. In one set we have magnets, and in the other subset we have something that can hang vertically on the wall.

Then we get a huge number of options. It could be a screw, it could be a nail, it could be any small animal, from a fly to a gecko, and so on.

Or another example. They also sell a stand for toothpicks in the shape of a voodoo doll. Here we do the same thing: we imagine that we are making toothpick holders. To do this, we think about where something long and thin might be sticking out.

The first thing that comes to mind is hedgehogs, porcupines, brushes, combs, Saint Sebastian, cactus and so on. Do you understand how simple this is?

Another very good way of thinking is to think through things. The fact is that our brain is able to establish a connection between two objects, no matter how different they may seem. In cinema this is called the Kuleshov effect.

If we show food first and then the person’s face, then it will seem to us that the person is hungry. If we first show a naked woman and then the same face of a man, it will seem to us that he is lusting. And so on.

I'll tell you a short story about an Alpine ski resort that once encountered a problem. From time to time, the wires next to it became icy due to accumulated snow and could break, in which case the resort was left without electricity. Then the owners invited a group of engineers and gave them a task. They fought for a long time, and then, when the group finally reached a dead end, the leader said: “Guys, the brainstorming is over. Go to the village and let everyone buy some item and return with it to discuss.”

One man walked through an alpine village and brought a pot of honey. “So what?” they asked him. “So what? We place the honey pot on top of the power line. Bears, attracted by the smell of honey, will climb on it, shake the power lines, and then the snow will be shaken off them.”

Then another said: “Listen, we fly helicopters all the time. They transport the sick, throw climbers and skiers up the mountains. Let's not just fly helicopters, but along or near the lines. Then they will solve this snow problem practically free of charge.”

Do you understand what I mean? It's good when a person thinks. There was such a thing on Kickstarter - a cube with different buttons, switches, shutters. In general, such chewing gum for the hands. And he enjoyed some kind of wild popularity. So, it’s very useful to keep something like this in a drawer. Lots of different things. And if a problem arises, just go through it and think about how you can solve it with their help.

Admit it, sometimes you are extremely jealous of those who came up with some cool idea that the whole world has learned about. We read Harry Potter and think: “Oh, why didn’t I come up with this story about a boy wizard from Hogwarts!” Or we watch a video that won at the Cannes Lions festival and think: “What a brilliant and simple idea this is. Why didn’t it occur to me?” Ideas are in the air, we all know that. But how to get out of this very air an idea that will “shoot”?

Creativity expert Michael Micalko talks about how to become truly creative in his book Rice Storm and 21 More Ways to Think Outside the Box.

The right to choose

Creative people are joyful and confident. They look at what is and what could be, rather than at what is not. Instead of eliminating possibilities, creators allow for all possibilities, both real and imagined.

Can you imagine Leonardo da Vinci being too embarrassed to claim much due to lack of education? Albert Einstein, afraid of looking stupid because the patent office clerk could not present a theory of the universe? Michelangelo refusing to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel because he had never painted a fresco before?

Or Vincent van Gogh, complaining about the inability to sell his paintings as evidence of his lack of talent? - .

We choose what makes us significant or insignificant. We decide to be creative or indifferent. No matter how indifferent the world around us may be to our decisions, we must make these decisions ourselves.

Ultimately, our own creativity is determined by what we choose to do or not do. And when we decide and choose, our destiny is determined.

Quota of ideas and Thomas Edison

Set a quota of so many new ideas per day related to your work, for example, five ideas per day for one week. You will see that the hardest thing is to come up with the first five, then they will come to mind on their own. The more ideas you put forward, the greater your chances of winning. Try to meet your quota, even if the ideas that come to your mind at first glance seem ridiculous or far-fetched.

Thomas Edison and his famous light bulb, -

Thomas Edison patented 1,093 inventions. He firmly believed in exercising his own mind and the minds of his employees, and believed that without an established quota of ideas he would not have achieved so much. His personal quota was one small invention every ten days and one large invention every six months.

Journal of Ideas

An idea journal is a great thing, you just need to know how it works. Usually the plan is to “just write down ideas”, but this is not very effective. The most important task is to constantly refer to the journal and look for connections between the ideas written down and the problems at hand. Here's how it works.

Imagine you're chewing gum to calm your nerves, and then you get a great idea: why not create a rubber band to measure your stress levels? You write this thought down in a journal and return to the entry you made from time to time. A few months later you read somewhere that the pH value is very important for human health. And then it dawns on you.

What if you come up with a chewing gum that will serve as a kind of indicator and, based on the use of pH, show whether a person is healthy or not? Let's say you chew this gum for three minutes. If the gum turns red, you are healthy; if it turns green, you need to go home and go to bed.

Play with words

You can start by... changing the words. For example, the production manager at OV'Action from France was faced with the following challenge: how to develop a new, unique food product? He replaced the word “unique” with “amazing”, the word “develop” with “transform” and formulated the problem in a new way: how to transform a food product into something amazing?

He began to think about what might surprise him. He would be impressed if a familiar object took on an unusual shape, such as a cow-shaped airplane, pyramidal tomatoes, or square potatoes.

The Japanese came up with square watermelons - .

In the end, the solution came: square eggs. And he “developed” boiled square eggs with a yolk inside, with a shelf life of 21 days, suitable for heating in the microwave (how they compare favorably with ordinary eggs, which “explode”). Needless to say, OV'Action was confident that Americans would immediately rush to snap up this amazing new food as soon as it went on sale.

Leonardo da Vinci's method

Leonardo da Vinci's way of developing ideas was to close his eyes, completely relax, and scribble random lines and scribbles on a piece of paper. Then he opened his eyes and looked for images and nuances, objects and phenomena in the drawing. Many of his inventions were born from such sketches.

Here is an action plan on how you can use Leonardo da Vinci's method in your work:

Write the problem down on a piece of paper and think about it for a few minutes.

Relax. Give your intuition the opportunity to create images that reflect the current situation. You don't need to know what the drawing will look like before you draw it.

Give shape to your task by defining its boundaries. They can be of any size and take the shape you want.

Practice drawing unconsciously. Let the lines and scribbles dictate how you draw and arrange them.

If the result does not satisfy you, take another sheet of paper and make another drawing, and then another - as many as needed.

Explore your drawing. Write down the first word that comes to mind regarding each image, each squiggle, line, or structure.

Link all the words together by writing a short note. Now see how what you wrote relates to your task. Have new ideas emerged?

Be attentive to the questions that arise in your mind. For example: “What is this?”, “Where did this come from?” If you feel the need to find answers to specific questions, then you are on the right path leading to solving the problem.

And finally, remember that great ideas are often in the air and occur to several people at once. He will tell you how to catch ideas out of thin air and make money on them.

 

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