Producing Ideas
One of the reasons I like to blog on ThinkFold is to share ideas and techniques around the art of thinking and collaborating, as well as talking about the app.
ThinkFold is primarily a thinking tool (Dave Winer calls outliners 'ideas processors' (I love that term), because whether it's outlining an idea, building tasks lists or a presentation, you're still thinking and processing an idea.
I thought I'd write a post talking about a rather superb book, 'A Technique for Producing Ideas' by James Webb Young and how you can combine the technique with an outliner to really kick-start your creativity.
The book is brilliant, because it's a really fast read (you could nail the whole thing in half an hour) and it simply works;five really simple steps for what becomes a repeatable process for generating fresh ideas.
Here's a high-level outline of his 'Technique for Producing Ideas':
1. Gather information.
bq. "...write down the items of specific information as you gather them...after a while you can begin to classify them by sections of your subject. Eventually you will have a whole file box of them, neatly classified..."
As the book was written forty years ago, the tool of choice was a set of index cards. Of course now you can use an outliner as a gatherer and classifier of information.
2. Soak up all your research
This stage is all about synthesising the information:
"You take one fact, and turn it this way and that, look at is in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it...You bring two facts together and see how they fit."
Here you can use an outliner to fold away other information, allowing you to concentrate on one piece of information at a time. When it comes to bringing facts together, you can drag different bits of the outline around, sticking nodes together, seeing how information fits into different groupings.
And don't forget to capture ideas as they start to emerge:
"...little tentative or partial ideas will come to you. Put these down on paper. Never mind how crazy or incomplete they seem: get them down...Keep trying to get one or more partial thoughts onto your little cards."
3. Do something else
Young tells you to go off and do something else - watch a movie, read a book, anything that doesn't involve thinking about the 'idea'. This is to let your subconscious noodle away at the problem.
4. The idea appears
It's the 'eureka' moment where, having let your subconscious work away, the idea comes to you, out of the blue. You better write down that idea, or better still, outline it...
5. Share the idea
The final stage is to share your idea:
"Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to the criticism of the judicious. When you do, a surprising thing will happen. You will find that a good idea has, as it were, self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it to add to it. Thus possibilities in it which you have overlooked will come to light."
Well, all you need to do here is share your outline! See what other people think - they can enhance your original idea by adding ideas directly into your outline...
So that's it - five simple steps, coupled with a good thinking/processing tool and you're on your way to great ideas!
By the way, you can find the full text of this book as a PDF on the web - if you grab the PDF and find it useful, buy the book for a friend. It's only a fiver - that's a pound per technique!