How to be more creative – Expand with the 100 Idea challenge
As the name suggests, this hack to be more creative involves coming up with 100 ideas. Literally. 100 ideas to solve 1 single problem.
Why so many? Well, it comes down to how we often approach coming up with solutions to a problem.
The brain by nature can be a bit lazy. When coming up with a solution, we tend to lean to the well known and safe. Ideas that have worked for us in the past, that always prove to be true etc.
While these types of ideas may be safe and reliable, they aren't the most creative. Coming up with 100 ideas for a problem exhausts what we already know and forces us to go into unknown territory. It causes us to forgo perfection, convention, fear of being "silly". In truth, the only possible way to get to 100 is to come up with some wild new ideas.
For example, if we tried to come up with a campaign to sell a toothbrush.
Our first 10-20 ideas likely are very conventional. Run an ad on social media, get a celebrity endorsement and so on.
20-40 we likely dip into some cliches or borrowed ideas. We'll put a smile on buses or write a song.
But by 50...60...80...it's is going to become harder and harder to imagine anything new. So, we begin going far out of our usual way of thinking and into some ideas that are very.....creative!
What's most interesting about this space, though, is that ideas this far out may hold some real value.
In our toothbrush scenario, exhausted of new ideas we could say: "Let's tape a toothbrush to an elephant and set it loose on the savanah!"
Now, on the surface this seems perfectly ludicrous...but what happens if we play with that a moment? What if an elephant was the spokesperson? And for every sale we'll contribute to an anti-poaching organization? (Further helping our message of protecting teeth / tusks?)
From a far out idea we've stumbled upon an interesting (and more importantly) creative idea.
Do this exercise a few times and you may find yourself jumping into that far out creative space easier. You'll have seen the benefits of having outlandish ideas and be more able to dip into that creative space.
It'll come as natural as an elephant brushing his teeth.
Cheers to your next creative idea.
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