Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Blog Entry 1B: Ways to Get Ideas

http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/49.06.14Ways

Mitch Ditkoff gives his readers 14 ways to get breakthrough ideas. They are very insightful thoughts that really make you question the way that you go about solving a problem or thinking of an idea. After reading this, "getting a breakthrough idea" doesn't seem like such a hard task. Realistically, if you are involved and interested in something, you will know enough information about that certain subject that it would not be hard at all to just let your thoughts flow into a great idea!! But also easier said than done, but I believe these 14 steps will significantly help people with ideas floating around in their heads to make them reality! My favorite three steps are...
1. Follow Your Fascination
6. Define the Right Challenge
8. Take a Break

Fallowing your Fascination. I like that he uses the word fascination rather than interest. I think that intrest has the connotation of something that you know all about, your friends and family know it is an interest of yours and it seems concrete. Fascination is that little thing that, when you see it, it makes you think and it does something to your mind that really sparks it. Fascination has the potential to be so new and exciting and lead to a real passion and breakthrough idea! I think one of the most important things you can do in life is WHAT YOU WANT TO DO!!! mind-blowing, I know. I also think fallowing your fascination is a great way of opening your minds potential, because if your fascinated, you'll have a passion and if your passionate, you'll have drive, and if your driven there is nothing you cant do. Having video production as a major in itself is fallowing my fascination, but within that,  making videos about things that fascinate me will probably lead something really well made.

Defining the Right Challenge. During school, especially high school, I've found that the most students have wrong answers to things, because they dont know what they're being asked. Not knowing the question makes impossible to answer. I recently watched a movie in my english class in which 5 people were trapped in an enclosed space with only water for an unknown amount of time. It was sort of a "saw"  spin off where he was watching them to see how they would react to being trapped without food. Of the five, two decided that eating the others was the only way to survive, when the last woman of the opposing three separates herself from them, they kill one another and she temps the watcher to come down by writing him a message on a piece of metal and 'dying' due to starvation. When he comes down, she kills him and is able to escape. She saw the problem as, how do I get out? not who do I kill to survive? By defining the right challenge and thinking long term she ended up being the only survivor. Defining the right challenge is a huge and vital but many times overlooked step to solving an issue. Defining the issue can be used to trouble-shoot and get things done faster on set and while fixing equipment.

Taking a break. Nap-time. A lost art. I think there would be nothing better for children in elementary through high school than nap-time. Stress is a mind killer! A break can be the most rewarding thing to a strenuously thinking mind. By not thinking about about an issue or problem, you start to think about it and BOOM! answer. A relaxed mind falls to your subconscious which then finds the answer in some place we can't find. Personally, I find that I start having my best ideas as I'm trying to fall asleep, right when I want to stop thinking. I keep a notebook by my bed so I can write down all the ideas I have once I try to fall asleep, so I guess thats my way of implementing taking a break in my own creative life, going to sleep :) .


3. Tolerate Ambiguity
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 have an idea for a movie, but because it is coming from a real life experience its frustrating to pick and choose what is important and also a larger than life approach to make it interesting. By keeping a journal of ideas I can stay with it in hopes of stumbling upon a better way of going about my story.

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