3 Reasons Intentionally Coming Up With Bad Ideas Are Fertilizer For Brilliant Ideas.
Whenever I’m brainstorming with teams, one of the rules we have is nobody is allowed to preface an idea by saying, “Okay, this is bad idea but…”. Because we don’t want anyone to feel judged by what comes out of our mouth.
In fact, my 1st draft in recent times have been a shit show.
But knowing it’s stanky gives me the courage to plow through.
So If someone does judge you for your bad ideas, just smile. Don’t take it to heart.
I want you to know there are no ‘bad’ ideas. Someone who spits out a bad idea is getting us closer to a great idea than the people sitting in silence overanalyzing every thought for perfect ideas.
That reminds me of the last brief we worked on. In brainstorms, all I could volunteer were seemingly bad ideas. But those bad ideas have led to something high-fiveable. My seemingly worst or generic ideas were extrapolated into something worth exploring.
So great ideas aren’t lying around on the surface for us to pick up and slap into our presentation decks. Don’t get frustrated when you haven’t struck gold an hour or even two days into concepting.
But if you want to get to those good ideas faster, try getting through all of those surface ideas faster. Set a timer for 60 minutes and intentionally come up with as many of the crappiest ideas you can.
By intentionally coming up with bad ideas it helps in 3 ways:
- Instead of fearing bad ideas, trying to avoid them, judging yourself for having them, or making them mean anything about you, you start to see them as a necessary and unavoidable part of the process.
- Self-doubt, like any bully, picks on you when you’re most vulnerable and you’re most vulnerable when you’re stuck. When you give yourself the freedom to be bad it keeps that thought train rolling right through stinky town and onto greener pastures.
- Not all of your ideas will be bad.
But going forward, I may start handing out bad idea permission slips before brainstorms.
Wishing you a steaming pile of ideas.
