Metaideas

March 21, 2005 6:04 AM

What are good ways to generate new ideas for something you’re thinking about when you’ve hit a brick wall?

I’ve been turning ideas for career/life choices around for a while and not come up with anything. I feel the need to add some sort of fresh input or another way of looking at the problem. I find Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies good for artistic ideas, but don’t mesh so well with this way of thinking.

I’m interested in ideas from any field really not just careers.

posted by lunkfish to Education (17 answers total)

I often find it helpful to look at the problem backwards or in the negative.

For example, in terms of career paths we tend to think 'what's the next thing I need to do to get to X?' If that's not working for you, consider 'what's the last thing I need to do before I get to X?' and then work backwards. So if your goal is to become a research scientist, perhaps the last thing you need to do is find a post-graduate fellowship somewhere. So then what's the last thing you need to do before you can find a post-graduate fellowship, etc. (Examples completely made up, IANAMB.)

Thinking of things in the negative can also help. Rather than thinking about where you want to go, think about where you don't want to go. Examine your reasons why not. Start with silly things, even, things that are way far away from what you're considering. 'I don't want to be a garbage man because I'd have to get up early and it's physical labour.' 'I don't want to be a funeral director because I don't like dealing with emotional people.' The things you don't like about those jobs can tell you what things to look for in the areas closer to home. If those are two things you think, and you're planning to go into IT, for example, help desk might not be for you, because people with problems tend to be upset, and help desk or call center work tends to be much more rigidly scheduled than other kinds of computer work.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:22 AM on March 21, 2005

Take a break. Let your ideas germinate in the dark earth of your brain, and come back in a day or a week and see what has sprouted.
posted by orthogonality at 6:25 AM on March 21, 2005

On preview, just a verbose version of orthogonality's advice:

First, stop banging your head against that brick wall. Take a nap—a really good, I'm-going-to-sleep-til-I-damn-well-feel-like-getting-up nap. Then, if you meditate, meditate. If some new ideas don't pop into your head by the end of the nap, or the end of the meditation, then you may need some kind of vacation—getting away from the wall so you can forget about it completely and then coming back to it with a fresh set of eyes. In other words, just let go of the problem as completely as you can. Either it will just go away, never to trouble you again, or your subconscious will start solving it for you in ways your conscious mind is too boxed in to contemplate.
posted by bricoleur at 6:35 AM on March 21, 2005

I've been doing career counseling for 15 years (holy cr*p! has it really been that long?)

This is where I love search engines. I will mess around by typing in words related to what I like do. Then see what comes up. Then I follow the links around for awhile.

For example, research books comes up with these interesting little meanderings: Search Result

Serendipity meets technology
posted by jeanmari at 6:38 AM on March 21, 2005

Think about it in the shower. There's something about the water hitting my heaad that always seems to jar a few fresh ideas loose.
posted by ikkyu2 at 6:50 AM on March 21, 2005

you could try oblique strategies.
posted by handee at 6:53 AM on March 21, 2005

I definitely go with the "take a break" suggestion. I know the feeling of getting locked down into recurring loops of thought and that never goes anywhere. Taking a break - and a real, long break; not just five minutes - plus seeking distraction from other activities and people, is a great way of allowing the mental logjam to disperse.

When you return to the issue, try not to immediately latch back on to the thoughts you had when you left off. That's just going to get you back to the same place. Try to come at it sideways - the suggestion about thinking beyond the immediate problem is a good one. Think about why you're even thinking about the thing that's giving you the problem: what are you ultimately trying to do? Poke around the issue from the edges rather than banging your head directly against it. You'll be amazed how often you'll find something loose to pick at...

Finally, getting other people's input can help, so long as you're prepared to really listen to their views and not cut them off with "oh, I've thought about that already" or "no, that definitely won't work because...". Just describe the problem as you see it and let them run with it, if they're willing. Sometimes they'll just say one thing - it might even be an apparently throwaway observation - which, if you stay open-minded, can start a new chain of thought in your head.

Good luck with it.
posted by Decani at 7:04 AM on March 21, 2005

Smoke a joint.
posted by recurve at 7:34 AM on March 21, 2005

In the early 70s, I learned the meanings of each of the tarot cards. Although crap for fortune-telling (of course), the range of meanings encompass virtually every aspect of life. So, when I hit a wall (especially when writing), I do a layout.

Opening a thesaurus at random is equally effective, but not nearly as picturesque.

Taking a walk is good, as is whacking a tennis ball against a brick wall.
posted by mischief at 7:42 AM on March 21, 2005

I've had good luck with listing components of something. Career-wise, make some lists - what you've been paid to do, what you're good at, what you like to do, what you want to do, what you're interested in learning to do. Perhaps there's some overlap in the lists and it will give you a new place to start thinking.
posted by FreezBoy at 7:47 AM on March 21, 2005

for "creative" stuff, looking round a good museum works for me.

for "life and career", i've never really thought that hard, just gone along with what seemed interesting. options drift along, so i jump on one as it's passing buy and - plop - another country/job/whatever. i'd say the trick is not to swaet it too much - it's surprising how little difference "big decisions" end up making, in my experience.
posted by andrew cooke at 8:02 AM on March 21, 2005

for me the best thing is to force my mind off the issue by doing something that takes all my attention, like drawing or playing music or skiing. Then my subconscious chews things over and comes up with ideas that pop out later in the shower (like ikkyu2).
posted by anadem at 8:25 AM on March 21, 2005

I got Oblique Strategies in the 80s when they were first re-issued and looked forward to using them for ideas. But at the same time I held back because I didn't want to use them up and say "jeeziz, not that card again." To date, as it turns out, I now know what is on exactly one card. The deck sits there, full of potential. Somehow that seems to have helped me come up with stuff on my own - it's like a security blanket of ideas.

Anyway, over the weekend, as it turns out, I was doing exactly this - I needed a handful of ideas for a project I was just assigned, so I set myself the task of coming up with 101 ideas on it by the end of the weekend.

Such a large and arbitrary number is oddly freeing, I've found: For one thing, you know not every idea out of 101 is going to be a good one, so you can go ahead and list (and check off a number for) just about anything that occurs to you no matter how big, small, serious or silly; and making the idea-generation into a game with a goal (reaching 101) adds a kind of narrative focus to it as well as increasing the fun.

If you do this, I've found a key part of it is not to add the ideas sequentially (i.e. "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,[18]... (sigh) eighty-three to go") but lay out all the numbers and start throwing ideas in pretty much at random. Leave room to do variations of a given idea that will occur to you later, but in the meantime go to a different spot and add a whole different idea - maybe something that's the exact opposite of the one you just added. Then as you find ideas that are related, you can rearrange them to group similar approaches together, which may suggest patterns that imply further ideas.

The key thing is, even if you get to the end of the weekend or whatever and only have, say, 48 ideas, and only 25 of those are actually useful, that's still a lot of ideas, and you've gotten a head start on organizing your thinking about them.
posted by soyjoy at 10:14 AM on March 21, 2005

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.
posted by euphorb at 12:27 PM on March 21, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks. There's some good stuff here to get the ball rolling...
posted by lunkfish at 2:23 PM on March 21, 2005

Roger Von Oech's books are excellent for the tools you'll need. "A Kick In The Seat Of The Pants" and " A Whack On The Side Of The Head"
posted by pablogrande at 5:32 PM on March 21, 2005

I once read a strategy for dealing with writer's block: Set writing aside, and be creative in another way. Bake something. Draw a picture. Build a birdhouse. Engage your creativity in an unrelated direction, to help jumpstart the metaphorical "juices."

I'm almost positive the author was Julia Cameron.
posted by cribcage at 9:17 PM on March 21, 2005