Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

10 Ideas a Day

One idea I love from James Altucher’s Skip The Line is wake up and write down: “10 Ideas a Day”.

The motivation for why one should just write down 10 ideas a day is keep your “idea muscle” in your brain strong. The idea generation part of your brain is the same as a muscle in your body.

Muscle Workout

If you do not use your muscle constantly, it will atrophy. When you do need your muscle, it won’t be strong enough to do what you want.

The same idea applies to your idea muscle. If you are not constantly generating ideas, when you need to generate ideas, you will just hit a wall when you need it.

Knowledge Worker Essential

As a knowledge worker, your ideas are one of the key differentiator between you and other knowledge workers. Keep your ideas sharp and you will stand out. Have dull ideas, well - you will just be executing other people’s ideas.

How to do it?

  • Have a simple pad or anything your comfortable writing with.
  • Write the first “problem” that comes to your head as the top line.
  • Generate 10 ideas or solutions to that problem.

The 10 ideas do not have to be “good”, you just need to have them. You are practicing and working out this problem solving muscle. Out of the 10 ideas listed, maybe 30% are decent.

The best thing is about having 30% decent ideas?

You now have three decent ideas to solve your problem.

Examples

This is a great situation where showing is better than talking. Recent lists I made:

10 ideas to spend time with the kids

  1. teach them something
  2. watch movie/TV together
  3. roll/tumble around
  4. listen to music together
  5. create something together
  6. cook something together
  7. goto the library
  8. read together
  9. build a slide
  10. clean up something

10 ideas to teach reading better

  1. follow book
  2. incorporate passions
  3. print lessons and display
  4. read books together
  5. write together
  6. get exposed to more words
  7. have fun words
  8. teach words of things they love
  9. read common words also seen outside
  10. challenge with interesting books

10 ideas to stay productive

  1. wake up early
  2. goto bed early
  3. get things done
  4. pick up momentum
  5. have low friction for next thing
  6. keep track of where you are in process
  7. don’t overwhelm yourself
  8. prioritize
  9. clean lists
  10. follow up

Conclusion

I love the “10 ideas a day” approach to keeping my idea generation muscle strong. It’s helped me find solutions that I would not have thought of initially.