http://changethis.com/
It can often be difficult to create new ideas, sometimes you are just not in the creative mood. "14 Ways to Get Ideas" by Mitch Ditkoff is a great article that gives many techniques (14 actually, as the title very accurately suggests) to find the inspiration to create new groundbreaking ideas. I thought the article was very insightful and I can see myself using some of these techniques in the future. All of the techniques suggested seem like pretty good ideas, although there were 3 that really stood out to me.
The technique that stood out the most to me was #4- Making New Connections. This is something that I often do when making music. I will combine the ideas of two or more of my favorite artists and try to make something of my own out of it. This is how most music is made. Someone will be playing a Beatles song on the guitar, slowly change it to make it their own, then give it the sound of a Metallica song, and they have a (almost) completely original song. Many of the songs that I have made came from me playing an already established song and then changing it to make it my own. Some old person once said (and this is probably very misquoted but its the same idea) "All art is just other people's art rearranged in a new way." The quote would sound much better if it were the real thing but I think that quote speaks for most movies, songs, books, video games, etc.
Another good technique is #11- Brainstorm. I think it is very important to collaborate with people who have similar creative interests to yourself. Working with someone else on an idea can help because they can fill in the blanks in your mind to the things that you're unsure about, and you can do the same for them. Take the Beatles song "A Day in the Life" for example. Lennon had two verses written, but the song felt incomplete because there was nothing in the middle of the song. So McCartney wrote his own section, and the contrast (VOCAB WORD!!!!) between the two parts of the song is one of the elements that makes it such a classic. I definitely plan to try and collaborate with some of my fellow Bobcats on projects in the future, but its tough at the moment because I don't really have any friends, but I'm on Facebook so send a friend request don't be shy!
The third technique that I liked was #2- Immerse. I think it is important to to take time in the day to just sort of stop doing whatever your doing and just think about things. I usually only do this when I'm lying in bed at night, but that is when I get some of my best ideas or think of some of my best songs. I'm usually to comfortable on my cozy dorm room mattress to get up and write any of these things down, which probably explains my lack of creative output, but I know that I think of these things because all I'm doing is THINKING and not sitting on the couch listening to music, eating a PB&J (Peanut Butter and Jelly) and reading the Facebook status of some random girl from my highschool that I will probably never talk to again. Instead of multi-tasking, I am uni-tasking, or whatever the phrase is called. There are no distractions, so the mind can focus on one thing. In the future, I plan to take some time out of the day to do this, and hopefully it will work wonders.
The question under Tolerate Ambiguity reads "What new idea of yours is bubbling on the brink of breakthrough? In what ways can you stay with it, even if something in you is impatient for a breakthrough?" I'm constantly thinking of ways to make unique mashups of songs and I have several ideas that I think are pretty good but I'm having trouble piecing them together. I often get impatient with this and think that I will never create something unique out of these ideas, but then I put on the song "Don't Stop Believing" (Or sometimes I'll just read the title outloud a couple times) and I keep moving on. But all joking aside (not that Journey is a joke or anything) I think one of the best things to do is just keep working at it, and when you get stuck, take a break to get your mind off of what your doing for awhile, which was actually one of the other techniques from the text but I thought of it first and Mitch Ditkoff plagiarized it.
The question for the technique suspend logic is "What can you do this week to suspend practicality, logic and rationality in service to birthing your big idea?" Well I could take the normal logic suspending route of most OU students and simply hit up The Crystal, but something tells me this wouldn't be too beneficial to me. Then as I'm writing this I realize that we only had to answer one of the questions so I'm just gonna go ahead and stop before I give a stupid answer.
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