9 Habits That Make It Easy To Come Up With Great Ideas

Idea generation is fueled by consumption, not creativity.

Creativity is just connecting things. The more things we have to connect, the better our ideas will become.

Consider the quantity and quality of things you consume, like books, movies, TV shows, articles and people you interact with. 

To get the most value out of what you consume, it helps to have a mode of output: Talk about it, write about it or condense it into a tweet.

To improve your idea generation, zoom out your perspective to a macro level. 

For example, on a micro-level, a Billy Joel concert may just be a fun way to spend a night. On a macro level, it is packed with ideas about how to connect with an audience.

Recognize ideas that constantly come to you and develop a system to capture them.

Carry around a notebook, leave yourself a voicemail, send an email or use any other way to capture the idea.

The process of communicating an idea helps to clarify it and see it in a new way. 

Express your own ideas out loud to somebody.

The process of coming up with questions to ask and listening to people's answers can lead to new ideas.

It trains us to look for different viewpoints and layers to things.

There are infinite answers to every challenge.

Seek out different ways people answer the same question. Consume conflicting ideas to help you see the bigger picture.

The most valuable ideas are ones that solve problems for people.

Think about what problems people have that you’d like to solve.

A variety of environments sparks a higher quality of ideas.

Try to brainstorm at different times and locations: for instance, when you wake up one day, at lunch the next, and right before bed the day after that.