Everyone everywhere is interested in innovation. Of the various keynote addresses that I’ve created over the years, my Uncrapify Your Future! keynote on innovation is easily the most popular. And I understand why. Coming up with solutions to problems, or taking advantage of possible opportunities, is one of the key drivers of success, both professionally and personally.
Which is why people ask me all the time, “How can I come up with the next great idea?”
The first step, of course, is to have a question you’re trying to answer. That’s usually the easy part, since most of us have a handful of really good questions bouncing around in our heads. However, thinking up good answers to those questions is where we most commonly falter. And it’s not because we can’t think. It’s because we often choose not to.
“What? You’re saying I’m choosing not to think? That’s not true!”
I think it may be. And let me tell you why.
There are two main reasons that thinking about how to answer our questions isn’t something most of us spend a lot of time on. The first is because thinking doesn’t look especially productive. If you see me at work and I’m typing on a computer or talking on the phone or welding something or whatever – well hey, that guy is working! I look like I’m being productive, right?
But now imagine that you walk past my office and I’m just sitting there a far-off look in my eyes. You say, “What are you doing?” And I say, ‘Oh I’m thinking so hard. Ideas are just exploding right now.’ I doubt you’re quite as likely to believe that I’m being productive in that moment. You’ll probably think I’m goofing off or wasting time, not that I’m being particularly useful or productive in that moment.
This is one of the biggest problems with creative thought – it isn’t tangible, and so we have a tendency not to value it. We think we should be doing “more important” things – answering emails, scheduling meetings, checking things off our to-do list – and before we know it we’ve left ourselves zero time for thinking about how to answer whatever questions we’re facing. So in an ideal world, a part of every day should include some amount of time dedicated to nothing more than simply thinking about whatever questions you want to answer.
And so now you might be wondering, “OK, if that’s all I have to do, then why don’t I feel especially innovative?” Well, this gets at the second main reason that thinking isn’t something most of us spend a lot of time on – your phone, or computer, or whatever devices you are currently chained to.
Every day all of us are bombarded with an endless stream of texts, emails, and notifications. We have instantaneous access to millions of songs to download and videos to watch and TV shows to catch up on. We know there is an unending stream of messages in our social media feeds, another news article a friend told us we should read, a mountain of podcasts we’d like to listen to. Collectively, this unimaginable access to information provides us with continuous ways to distract ourselves from the simple act of thinking about how to answer our questions.
So if you want to see yourself reaching new heights and blowing past your competition because you are coming up with new and better ideas at a faster rate than everyone else, then you first have to slow down. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it’s the truth. Our best ideas come to us in moments that often feel like we’re not doing anything at all, or in the messy and meandering conversations we have with others that allow us to move along the strange and winding road that ends in an answer to whatever question we’re thinking about.
Sitting and thinking – or walking around and thinking, or lying in bed and eating lunch and thinking – might not seem like much of a skill. But it is, and like with all skills, it’s one that we get better at with practice. A lot of us, though, really don’t want to practice this skill. You want to see why I say that? Get ready for the most amazing psychological study ever!
Researchers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville recently conducted an interesting experiment. They put people into an empty lab by themselves for 15 minutes with nothing – no reading material, no windows, no Internet access, nothing – and asked them to just sit and think. They also gave them the ability to push a button and shock themselves if they wanted to. And despite the fact that every participant in this study had previously said they would pay money to avoid being shocked, 67% of the men and 25% of the women chose to shock themselves rather than simply sit alone and think. That’s insane! And doesn’t speak favorably of men, by the way. But more importantly, that’s insane! So many of us are so unaccustomed to being alone with our own thoughts that we would rather experience pain than let our minds wander.
So there you go. If you would rather electrocute yourself than be alone with your own thoughts, you might have some work to do. But if that doesn’t sound like you, then really the only challenge here is to occasionally turn the world off, pick one of the questions you have, and then let your mind have at it. Finding a good answer might take five minutes, or it might take five months. But as long as you keep coming back to that question, a good answer will eventually come.
