idea generation

Ideas and bacteria have a lot in common. You can’t control them. You can’t create them out of thin air. Some are good, and some are bad. But you can design the best possible environment for the good ones to thrive and multiply, and that’s how we want to approach idea generation. We want to approach it like a great fermentation.

What humans do best is see information in our environment, synthesize it, and connect it with related ideas in novel ways. But it’s much harder for us to come up with something out of nothing. It helps a lot to have something to react to.

If you want great ideas, you must remove all the bad ingredients. Outrage, information you don’t care about or can’t act on, trivia, fluff. Obviously, you should keep some fun in your life.