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lifehacker.com: Ideas make the world go round, but coming up with great ones isn’t always easy. Here are ten ways you can prompt your brain to get those ideas flowing.
This article was a little disappointing. I frequently struggle with coming up with that initial spark when I’m creating, and since we just got assigned our first design project I was hoping it might have some suggestions which would help me in generating an idea. However, the things it had to offer, while genuinely very helpful for coming up with ideas, are very commonplace suggestions for people struggling to think of something new. The exception to that was the concept of “idea-sex”: combining two so-so ideas to create one great idea. I’ve never heard it put quite like that, and I think that concept could come up with some really cool things, particularly if you didn’t shy away from unusual and bizarre combinations of ideas. But overall I felt like the article was rehashing common knowledge. But maybe that just goes to show that we all know what it takes to help our minds come up with new and brilliant things, we just have to be reminded sometimes so we can get ourselves out of that creative funk and move on with creating.
While brainstorming is an important part of many processes, I don’t think this article says anything new or profound about brainstorming. What I take from this article is that there is no wrong way to brainstorm, but you should write down your ideas so you don’t forget them. This article also focuses on the creation of ideas without any parameters. I’m always one for throwing ideas out, but most of the time they have to fit within the parameters of a problem or scenario. That isn’t to say that these methods don’t or won’t work, but rather that some of the methods may work better for initial brainstorming than problem solving. I’ve often proposed happy hour production meetings for the same reasons listed in the article. Even if a relaxed setting doesn’t make the creative juices flow, it helps to alleviate the pressure to come up with an idea and allows us to explore more options instead of shooting down ideas immediately.
I almost didn’t read this article because I usually don’t find that they actually say anything meaningful, or really, anything at all. I didn’t really find this one to be particularly different, offering what is at best vague statements about things someone might have been inspired while doing once. Under it all is an underlying implication that all inspiration must come from you and only you. That contact with others will only lead to the contamination of your ideas and hinder your ability to be creative. For me I often find the opposite is true. In my experience my conversations with people, my peers, professors, strangers, often serve to inspire me. Even if they aren’t even aware of the problem I’m trying to solve in the back of my mind the often vibrant and random interactions I have with people break my out of my frame of mind and let me find the solution.
I read this article hoping to find new ways to inspire myself, as I often, and others due as well, find myself in an artistic block. As a stage manager coming into this program, their were many Susan projects that I felt really lost on at the start while it seemed everyone else had their idea already. However, these tips were many things I already do, but on the same scale they do seem a little helpful. The author seemed to value being alone for ideas to form. I think that inspiration, for me at least, tends to come better being surrounded by different environments and people. The last way the author talked about, keeping a notebook of just ideas that come to your head through out the day, does seem helpful. I have always keep a note on my phone dedicated to those kinds of things, but I wonder if actually taking pen to paper would be a better way.
While I’ve begun to expect these kinds of shallow tips from these sorts of articles, I can’t help but read them every time, hoping that there will be some kind of new nugget of information I could take with me next time I’m stuck on what to do for a design project. However, this article didn’t provide me with anything new I hadn’t heard before, and, to be honest, a lot of the tips seem like downright bad advice to me. First of all, I think it’s difficult for anyone to boil down the ways to “brainstorm” in a few sentences and pictures, since brainstorming has so many different applications in different areas of life. Personally, I don’t see how theater designers/ managers would have the time to wait to be inspired by sleeping or drinking beer. And I think the general advice of writing down everything, taking a shower, and going for walks, aren’t so much tips for brainstorming as they are tips for life and being healthy. I think that, in general, we need to stop thinking about ourselves are receptacles for the generation of ideas, and start thinking about the world around us in more complex ways.
5 comments:
This article was a little disappointing. I frequently struggle with coming up with that initial spark when I’m creating, and since we just got assigned our first design project I was hoping it might have some suggestions which would help me in generating an idea. However, the things it had to offer, while genuinely very helpful for coming up with ideas, are very commonplace suggestions for people struggling to think of something new. The exception to that was the concept of “idea-sex”: combining two so-so ideas to create one great idea. I’ve never heard it put quite like that, and I think that concept could come up with some really cool things, particularly if you didn’t shy away from unusual and bizarre combinations of ideas. But overall I felt like the article was rehashing common knowledge. But maybe that just goes to show that we all know what it takes to help our minds come up with new and brilliant things, we just have to be reminded sometimes so we can get ourselves out of that creative funk and move on with creating.
While brainstorming is an important part of many processes, I don’t think this article says anything new or profound about brainstorming. What I take from this article is that there is no wrong way to brainstorm, but you should write down your ideas so you don’t forget them. This article also focuses on the creation of ideas without any parameters. I’m always one for throwing ideas out, but most of the time they have to fit within the parameters of a problem or scenario. That isn’t to say that these methods don’t or won’t work, but rather that some of the methods may work better for initial brainstorming than problem solving. I’ve often proposed happy hour production meetings for the same reasons listed in the article. Even if a relaxed setting doesn’t make the creative juices flow, it helps to alleviate the pressure to come up with an idea and allows us to explore more options instead of shooting down ideas immediately.
I almost didn’t read this article because I usually don’t find that they actually say anything meaningful, or really, anything at all. I didn’t really find this one to be particularly different, offering what is at best vague statements about things someone might have been inspired while doing once. Under it all is an underlying implication that all inspiration must come from you and only you. That contact with others will only lead to the contamination of your ideas and hinder your ability to be creative. For me I often find the opposite is true. In my experience my conversations with people, my peers, professors, strangers, often serve to inspire me. Even if they aren’t even aware of the problem I’m trying to solve in the back of my mind the often vibrant and random interactions I have with people break my out of my frame of mind and let me find the solution.
I read this article hoping to find new ways to inspire myself, as I often, and others due as well, find myself in an artistic block. As a stage manager coming into this program, their were many Susan projects that I felt really lost on at the start while it seemed everyone else had their idea already. However, these tips were many things I already do, but on the same scale they do seem a little helpful. The author seemed to value being alone for ideas to form. I think that inspiration, for me at least, tends to come better being surrounded by different environments and people. The last way the author talked about, keeping a notebook of just ideas that come to your head through out the day, does seem helpful. I have always keep a note on my phone dedicated to those kinds of things, but I wonder if actually taking pen to paper would be a better way.
While I’ve begun to expect these kinds of shallow tips from these sorts of articles, I can’t help but read them every time, hoping that there will be some kind of new nugget of information I could take with me next time I’m stuck on what to do for a design project. However, this article didn’t provide me with anything new I hadn’t heard before, and, to be honest, a lot of the tips seem like downright bad advice to me. First of all, I think it’s difficult for anyone to boil down the ways to “brainstorm” in a few sentences and pictures, since brainstorming has so many different applications in different areas of life. Personally, I don’t see how theater designers/ managers would have the time to wait to be inspired by sleeping or drinking beer. And I think the general advice of writing down everything, taking a shower, and going for walks, aren’t so much tips for brainstorming as they are tips for life and being healthy. I think that, in general, we need to stop thinking about ourselves are receptacles for the generation of ideas, and start thinking about the world around us in more complex ways.
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