The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Idea Sex: A Case for Creative Promiscuity

The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

 

Pezzi di vita che diventano viaggio  (Far East Film Festival 10 - 2008)

Piero Fissore via Compfight

I recently had a great interview with James Altucher (to be published soon). When I started to ask him about coming up with ideas for content he said "ideas have sex and then have idea children."  I had never heard it put that way before and realized it was one of the most profound insights I'd ever heard on the creative process. So naturally I had an idea for a blog post about it. If you hire me to work with you chances are I'll give you about 40 different ideas that you could apply to your business. I'm kind of promiscuous like that…. (get your head out of the gutter). What I mean is I'll share an endless stream of ideas that you can flirt with, dance with, kiss or fall completely in love with. While the ideas we fall in love with aren't always perfect, the only way you can fall in love is if you're willing to have your heart broken. Or to put it more simply try something that might not work.  When they do work  you'll surprise yourself. We have a tendency to resist ideas just because we don't know where they'll lead.  As a result we figure it's only worth generating them if we know how we'll execute.  But all this does is  put you in a "dry spell."   The simple solution is to be promiscuous with your ideas.  Hook up with new ones every single day. You don't have to get in a relationship with them just because you hooked up.

How to Stay on Good Terms When You have a One Night or One morning Stand With Your Ideas

Most of us are kind of obnoxious to our ideas. We don't even have the decency to buy them breakfast.  What I mean by this is we let them slip away without really acknowledging them. David and I hatch about 25 new ideas every meeting that we can't possibly execute in the next 6 months. They range from ridiculous ideas like "you think Kim Kardashian would make a good BlogcastFM guest?" to "what kind of an event can we put on that would absolutely rock?" So I suggested creating an "idea space."  There's a great tool called Catch which allows you have collaborative spaces.  You can take pictures with it. You can add notes. You can record sounds. You could also do the same thing with Evernote (but Catch gives you a collaborative space for free). Think of it as a free range whiteboard that you never erase or in our analogy here, the idea orgy.  You leave your ideas to get it on, and when you come back they'll have made the idea babies that James talks about. So what about you? Are you being promiscuous enough with your ideas?

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