Where Do Ideas Come From?

Since publishing a series of posts on dating and living in the final couple of weeks, I've been asked several times how I came upward with the idea to meet dating as a kind of metaphor for life. The immediate source of the story was pretty mundane – someone asked me a question well-nigh some other article and I used going on a appointment as an case to illustrate my answer, and idea "hey, there might exist something to this more generally!"

Only the response to those stories has gotten me thinking about ideas and creativity more by and large. Writers are asked all the time near where we get our ideas. So are musicians, painters, actors, designers, and other artistic people. Information technology'south a source of fascination for many, who maybe see in the talent of others something they feel is missing from themselves.

Interestingly, nigh of the artistic people I know don't meet their creative impulses as specially exclusive. What separates the creative from the not-and then-creative isn't and then much the ability to come up with ideas but the ability to trust them, or to trust ourselves to realize them. That trust lies at to the lowest degree in part in knowing nosotros have the skills to bring forth a finished product from an initial idea, which is why so many creative people tend to have a craftsman's (or adult female's) approach towards their work (and resent those who squander their ideas by refusing to do the groundwork needed to make them real), simply skill is only office of it. At that place are enough of skilled but not-peculiarly-artistic people – hacks – in every field. What separates the creative from the not-so-creative is the willingness to take risks with ideas, to push both the idea and the self beyond the prophylactic and comfortable.

There are two schools of idea about where ideas come from. I is the "artist as antenna" concept, in which ideas float in some barely perceptible aether waiting for someone to option them up, the way a radio picks up a song when information technology'south tuned to but the right frequency. This is Keith Richards waking upwards in the middle of the night with the main riff from "Satisfaction" fully-formed in his head.

The second school holds that ideas are the product of hard work and thoughtful concentration. "Information technology'due south just work," says Andy Warhol to Lou Reed about songwriting in Reed's album, with John Cale, Songs for Drella. Sit down with a pad and pencil and recollect, and don't get upwardly until you take something! This schoolhouse is the writer grinding out his or her 4 pages a mean solar day, the mad poet storming upward and downwards the street in search of the perfect word to express exactly what south/he'southward feeling, and the designer who sits down with a cursory and just starts working.

The reality is probably somewhere in the centre – we get ideas from within ourselves and from without, or more to the point, from the interaction of the ii. It is in the agile date of the creative person with his or her earth, through training, witting attention, curiosity, try, and a dash of serendipity, that ideas are born:

• Preparation: Ideas come to those who are prepared to receive them, whatsoever the origin. Scientists have ideas about science, not poetry – unless they accept also skillful at the craft of verse. And vice-versa – information technology'southward the rare poet who is struck past an idea that advances our understanding of molecular biological science. Skilful musicians have ideas that translate into cute songs, and skillful writers create daring novels that illuminate our lives. Those who haven't prepared themselves to be creative rarely are.
• Attending: Paying attention to the world around us – whether the immediate activities of people in our vicinity or the afar events reported through the media, or anywhere in between – is i source of ideas. You've heard the saying that "necessity is the other of invention" but information technology also takes someone paying close enough attention to recognize that demand in the first place.
• Curiosity: Creativity oft comes from the drive to sympathize and take things autonomously, literally or figuratively. It stems from the desire to know "what if…" and to follow that question until it gets somewhere interesting.
• Endeavor: Whether yous're the antenna or the bricklayer, inventiveness takes a commitment to work. "Ideas are cheap," the saying goes. "Execution is hard." Ideas need to exist captured, given attending, followed up on, and committed to a plan of action, or they disappear dorsum to wherever they came – whether "out in that location" or deep in your unconscious listen. And they rarely come back.
• Serendipity: Serendipity is ii things. Showtime, it's the luck to be at the right place at the right time, to be Newton at exactly the moment the apple falls from the tree. The second is the openness to making connections between unrelated things or events – to see in a bathtub a lesson about physics, or to run across in a engagement a lesson about life.

These elements of creativity all play together, of course. How many millions of baths were taken before Archimedes had his "Eureka!" moment? Nevertheless it was Archimedes who was prepared to sympathize what it meant when he climbed into his bathroom and saw the water level rise, Archimedes who paid attention to what he saw, Archimedes who was curious enough to wonder what was happening, Archimedes who was willing to do the follow-upward piece of work to translate his feel into a general principle well-nigh book and displacement, and Archimedes who just happened to bring all this with him into the bathroom on that fateful day.

The thing is, these are all things each and every ane of united states can cultivate in her or his own life. They aren't God-given gifts reserved to the few. And they apply well across the earth of the arts – marketers, parents, teachers, factory workers, salespersons, electricians, computer programmers, and just well-nigh anybody else face up situations that call for creative responses, though we frequently miss them for lack of preparation, attention, marvel, attempt, or serendipity. Start making a conscious effort to develop these elements, though, and I bet you'll kickoff engaging with your world more than creatively in short lodge.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/where-do-ideas-come-from.html