idea generation

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.

Our ideas appear primarily in one situation: when little else is occupying our thoughts…Good ideas require boredom. If you constantly ingest new information, the existing information can never be digested.

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.