How to Generate Ideas Without Thinking

Ideas can be illusive. They rarely show up when we need them and often unexpectedly appear when we are unprepared to receive them. Is it possible to entice ideas to pop into your head upon request?

In fact, the best way to generate an idea when you need one is to think about something else—or, better yet, don’t think about anything specific at all.

I need ideas daily. I write between six and seven blog posts per week. I frequently propose article to publishers and book ideas to my literary agent, decide to write e-books, and choose to create new products and services. Each one of these tasks represents the need for a new idea.

That doesn’t mean that I have all the ideas I need every day. More often than not, the time I need an idea is just when I lack one.

However, I’ve developed a few methods to help generate ideas, or at least to have more of them upon demand.

Relax Into the Ideation Mode

Did you ever wonder why you get your best ideas in the shower? It’s because that’s when you relax. Or maybe your ideas show up while you are on the treadmill—when you are doing something mindless.

According to research, that aha moment you’ve been waiting for has a higher likelihood of happening when you are involved in activities that don’t require thought and that put you into a relaxed state. When you soap yourself in the shower, sit in a fishing boat, or walk your dog, your mind shifts into autopilot mode. That frees up your unconscious to work on something else.

Researchers at Dartmouth equate this state to daydreaming, which relaxes the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that makes decisions, sets goals and determines your behavior. These mindless activities also open and connect different regions of your brain allowing you to make new connections between ideas or thoughts. When this happens, you enter a creative state in which your conscious mind contemplates ideas it might otherwise have dismissed.

How to Access Ideas

If you need ideas, you want to find ways to relax and go into this mindless state. Do something repetitious and unrelated to the job at hand. Take a shower! Go for a bike ride! Allow yourself to doing something boring!

Let’s say you need a work-related idea. The tendency is to sit at your desk and focus on the problem, but that causes your mind to close down.

To allow in ideas, don’t think hard about the problem at hand—the need for an idea. If you do, you activate your prefrontal cortex’s control mechanisms, which increases your mental focus but causes your brain to censor your ideas—all those great unconventional or more-creative solutions you seek.

Instead, activate your brain by allowing it to wander. Shelley Carson at Harvard discovered that highly creative are easily distracted. Don’t focus continuously on your need for a solution or idea if you want to generate one. Choose a task that allows you to defocus so your brain can jump from one idea or thought to another. That’s when a new idea will pop into your head.

Let Your Unconscious Mind Do the Work

Here’s another trick: When you know you need an idea, solution or answer, write a query on a piece of paper or in a document on your computer. Then close your eyes and ask your Higher Self to bring you what you need.

Now trust. Have faith. Go about your day or week knowing you are involved in the ideation process—just not actively.

If something pops into your head related to your needed idea, jot it down on the same piece of paper or in the same file. Or create a folder and drop in the new ideas. Evernote is great for this; it synchs with a phone and a computer and allows you to create notes and clip things from the internet as well as take photos and place them in a particular notebook.

When the time comes to work on this project, open your folder or file. You’ll be amazed that your notes quickly will come together into a coherent idea. Why? Because you allowed your mind to work on the problem without that focus that cause it to throw out creative ideas. You allowed it to wander, to play, to connect with other parts of your brain without interference.

Do you have ideation techniques that work for you in a pinch? I’d love to hear about them. Leave me a comment below.

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Photo courtesy of alphaspirit.