Tune Out To Tune In

Where do you get your ideas?

I get my best ones in all sorts of strange places. In the shower, walking for the bus, on my bike. Rarely do ideas come to me at my desk.

Archimedes had his "Eureka" moment in the bath. You might do too.

CEOs seem to have ideas at the weekend. That's no co-incidence.

Creativity is an elusive thing. Try too hard and you'll not get anywhere. Ideas seem to have a life of their own and they are definitely not 9-5 office workers.

Here's something I learnt about ideas which really has helped me find more of these little creatures.

If I think about a problem hard and consciously, if I try to start solving it, even if I don't solve it, it plants a seed in my brain. My conscious mind works on the problem. Unless I've solved this problem before, rarely will a new idea form from conscious thought.

It's the unconscious mind which unlocks ideas. How scientifically true this is I cannot say. From experience though, I can say for sure that your unconscious mind continues to work on a problem long after your conscious mind has switched off.

You can be daydreaming in the shower and then pow! It comes to you. Taking that idea back into the conscious world you can do something with it and get cracking.

If you are short of ideas, discuss the issue at hand with someone and then leave it for a day or two. The unconscious mind will work it over and you might come up with new ways of looking at the situation.

Getting started is often the most important thing you can do. Just start the thinking consciously. Then pause. Reflect (not consciously). Wait. Discuss again. Reflect.

To really tune into a problem you sometimes need to tune out.