Train your brain to come up with ideas

Acts of great complexity and skill become second nature with practice. (Image from Bob and Betty's Summer with Captain Hawes by E. Boyd Smith, 1912)

When writing songs took up a huge chunk of my brain, I had a constant flow of new musical and lyrical snippets arising in my consciousness.

In college, I got a microcassette recorder that I would use to record these ideas, which cropped up any time I allowed my brain to have room for them: walking across the quad, in the shower, right before bed, or whenever I picked up an instrument. Then I got a minidisc recorder, and then an iPhone...these days, there is no shortage of methods for recording ideas.

The song ideas are no longer as frequent as they used to be. But that’s a function of my focus. The business ideas are frequent, the blog ideas constant. The ideas arrive because of what I’m paying attention to and consciously developing. These ideas “know” that they are falling upon fertile soil. They will be watered and nurtured and the light of my attention will fall upon them. They show up, and they stick around. They’re recorded and developed and brought to maturity. 

I believe that we can all learn this skill of collecting, cultivating, and harvesting our ideas. It begins with acknowledging that we are constantly receiving them, though we might not always recognize them. Then, we must practice making them into reality. The more we do this, the better we will get at it — and the more ideas we will find. 

The other day, I had a melody pop into my head. Because of my musical experience, I was able to immediately recall it and sing it into the voice recorder app on my phone. I can even sit down and play it on an instrument — I already know what the chords are for it and what drum groove  it “wants.” It took quite a few years of consistent work to learn how to do that. 

Without the voice recorder or the musical experience, the idea fades away. I might not even notice that I’m hearing an idea, per se — it will just blend in with all of the noise in my brain. But if I pay attention to the little bit of melody, that attention will be rewarded with a real song, just like a radio station coming in clearer as you approach its city of origin.

On one memorable occasion when I heard music in my head, the music got louder and stronger as I moved toward the guitar, picked it up, and began to play. A whole song “wrote itself,” as they say, within an hour. That wouldn’t have happened if I had walked away from the guitar, nor would I have been able to capture the song as easily if I didn’t know how to play the guitar. By recognizing the idea and having the necessary skills at the ready, the song came into being.

The same thing happens when I write a blog post. I have enough practice now to recognize what the ideas look like when they show up. I have learned how to draw them out, build a structure around them, and flesh them out into 700 words or so. As a result, the faintest little whiff of an idea, something that might have escaped my notice in the past, is enough now for me to grab onto and work with.

Paradoxically, the work doesn’t come from the ideas — the ideas come as a result of doing the work. And maybe that truth is not so immediately helpful if you’re just starting out, struggling to come up with the first ideas, but hopefully it does offer some incentive to keep going. You’re not going to run out of ideas. You will get more ideas as you “use up” the ones you have now. Things will get easier as you progress. 

I’m saying that I never struggle to think of ideas or that it’s effortless to do the work. Ha! I wish. What I am saying is that, though there are aspects of creative work that may always be magical and mysterious, coming up with ideas isn’t one of them. Most of the time, when I’m struggling, it’s because I’m rejecting the ideas I have. It’s like having a refrigerator full of food and whining that there’s nothing to eat, or having a closet full of clothes and complaining about having nothing to wear. In those situations, I need to look at what I have with new eyes. I may need to do some work — cooking, ironing, thinking — and I may not want to. What then? 

The solution is pretty much always to do the work. In doing it, we get better and stronger. We can start with our crummy ideas and give them our best. As we keep showing up, we’ll find more exciting and interesting ones that inspire and motivate us to stick with it. The ideas will keep flowing, the work will keep going, and we’ll gain more confidence in our ability. That confidence will sustain us through the harder times and make us ever more resilient. Then, there’s no telling what kind of crazy stuff we’ll come up with.