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How To Train Your Brain To Be An Idea Generating Machine

In this blog post, I am going to suggest that you should be coming up with at least 10 ideas a day and consistently writing these ideas down. What is the purpose of coming up with so many ideas so often you may ask? To work out your idea muscle.

I was first introduced to the concept of the idea muscle in James Altucher’s book ‘Choose Yourself’. The idea muscle is just like any other in your body, if you do not work out that muscle it atrophies.

Whether you are trying to come up with killer business ideas or ways of improving what you already do or even content ideas, this exercise will open up the taps.

Workout your idea muscle every day.

By simply spending 20–30 minutes a day working out your idea muscle, you will unlock a part of your brain that may have been dormant for a long time. At first, when I took on this challenge it was very difficult to come up with ideas. But as time went on and as I consistently kept up the practice I noticed it became easier and easier to come up with ideas as my idea muscle grew stronger.

It got to the point where I felt like my mind had been completely opened and ideas would just come to me at all times of the day. As I walk down the street, I may notice something that sparks another idea that I know previously I would have never noticed.

Every idea doesn’t have to be a business idea.

If you come up with 10 ideas a day for a year then this will be 3,650 ideas that you have now banked, it would be completely unrealistic to aim for coming up with that many business ideas. Your ideas can range from how to make slight adjustments to improve your day, productivity in work, your diet, your relationships, and so on.

A suggestion of James Altucher to help you get into the swing of coming up with 10 ideas a day was to start with lists. Here are some examples for you.

“10 Things I’m Interested in Getting Better At”

“10 things I learned yesterday”

Don’t be afraid to give away your ideas to others.

The amount of ideas that you can come up with is infinite. Ideas are easy, the hard part is executing them and turning them into something successful. And most people just don’t have it in them to take your idea and run with them.

When you go forward with this challenge you can then use your bank of ideas as capital to open doors and opportunities for yourself. For example, you could come up with 10 ideas on how you would improve a local business that you have dealt with previously and share these ideas with the business owners.

If they think that these ideas may add value to their business, they are more likely to open the door to you to implement these ideas for them. And hey presto, you have created a business for yourself.

Taking an idea and running with it.

You may have an idea that won’t stop coming back into your mind. Often these are the ones we need to investigate further and take onto step 2 of the process.

  1. Idea Generation
  2. Idea Prototyping/Research
  3. Testing
  4. Launching/Commercialization
  5. Failing, Scaling, or Selling

Failure will be inevitable for most people but this should not discourage anyone from repeating the process. As what you learn from your first venture will stand you in good stead to make the next one a success.

If you decided to take on the 10 ideas a day challenge to become an idea-generating machine then let me know if you noticed any big changes in your ability to be creative and come up with ideas on the spot.

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