Unscrambling Words. Unscrambling Ideas.

I was talking with a friend about Scrabble (always one of my favorite subjects), when it hit me as a perfect metaphor for creativity and idea-getting.

Here’s what I learned:

Words only fit with what’s on the board. Ideas only fit with a sound strategy.
You just can’t place any ol’ tiles on the board. Like ideas, they need to fit within a context. They need to work for what you’re aiming at.

The words are there. The ideas are there.
The idea is to find them among the great unscrambled. They are there.

Toss around the letters. Toss around thoughts.
Take a look at the puzzle in your mind from different angles, with different combinations.

Let it sit.
At some point in Scrabble, you just need to let the word come to you. In creativity, the idea often comes out of nowhere (if you put your mind in the right place to receive it).

Bingo!
50 extra points. A great idea.

#creativity #ideas

Twitter Brings Baseball Back to the 1930s

I’ve been following the local Little League all-star team as it makes its way through the regionals (last step before Little League World Series). Since the games are not on television or radio (or broadcast on the Internet), I’ve been following the action through the tweets of a local sports reporter (Pat Pickens).

It reminds me how Dutch Reagan and all of the other play-by-play announcers handled their craft decades ago, as they actually followed the game remotely by tickertape and then put together the “broadcast” of the game.

As soon as I see an update tweet from the Little Leaguers, I imagine how that play would have been called by Dutch and how he would have filled the time between batters and innings.

Ah, the era of imagination.

Lessons from an MRI

I had the (mis)fortune of having an MRI taken today and I knew going into it that I would probably have a blog post at the end (everything is okay; just my thumb). I had the sense that in lying completely motionless for 40 minutes, I’d find some metaphors for life in the digital and social world.

I did:

Lots of noise out there. If you’ve had one of these, you know how noisy they are. Lots of different noises – all loud – from all directions. Just like today’s socially connected world. Learn to filter out what’s not important and focus on sound, not noise. (although it’s quite difficult to filter out the MRI noise, there are spaces of quiet)


It’s nice to be still once in a while. Okay, I was forced to be immobile for 40 minutes, but I found this to be the only “still” time today. It also turned out to be my most productive thinking time all day. Life today moves fast; find your still thinking time. If just for a few minutes.


Everything is connected. While it was just my hand being looked at, everything needed to be still. Couldn’t move my head or my body. It’s funny how things in life are connected and intertwined, sometimes in an uncomfortable way.


Use your lifeline. I never had to squeeze the emergency button, but it was nice to know it was there. Even if you don’t have an emergency, lifelines can be vital. Identify yours – a mentor, a partner, a trusted advisor.


And remember, even in an MRI, there‘s a light at the end of the tunnel.

eb

Let Something Wonderful Happen

One of the plotlines of the classic Arthur C. Clarke book (and movie) "2010" is that as the long-lost Dave Bowman appears to current astronauts orbiting Jupiter, warning that … "something wonderful" will happen and they must leave (a new sun was soon born, which somehow led to the easing of cold-war tensions across the globe).

While a second sun is highly unlikely, 2010 can certainly be a year in which something wonderful happens to you. This isn’t just a sappy new age mantra.

Research has shown that people who expect great things are much more likely to receive great things. People who expect to come up with great ideas and are open to them, are the ones who develop the killer ideas.

So in this last year of 2009, resolve to have a more open mind in the coming year. Resolve to find a way to expect great ideas. Resolve to expect great things. Try it.

In this case, may life imitate art for you. Happy New Year.

Turning Primary Colors into a Kaleidoscope of Ideas

We all remember kindergarten (some more clearly than others); we were given three sheets of construction paper and ordered to “make something.”

Has that really changed? Isn’t that what coming up with ideas is all about: given a few primary facts and asked to make a kaleidoscope?

Think of the three primary colors as the building blocks of an idea – the who and what, etc. – and the cutting and pasting and arranging as coming up with the idea. Different combinations, shapes and gradients create new colors and make for new ideas. Ideas are all about connecting the unconnectable and linking the unlinkable. But only if you’re open to taking chances – at the risk of seeing wonderful new patterns and designs emerge.

Think of the slight turns of the kaleidoscope as important questions needed to change the lens and create a whole new picture… “What if…?” “Wouldn’t it be cool … ?” “If money was no object, what about…?”

So, the idea is to understand your building blocks – the primary colors – and be open to seeing all new combinations that come with the right questions and right frame of mind.

All it may take for a great idea to pop is a slight turn of your creative kaleidoscope.

Ideas Never Take a Snow Day

For many kids in the area, today is a snow day. Or, as I look outside, more like a slush day.

It’s amazing that within 30 seconds of finding out school is closed, kids have no shortage of ideas of how to spend the day. Okay, I do have two teenagers whose ideas are to immediately fall back asleep, but think back to when we were young. We were so grumpy to get up for school, but once it was called off, we had no shortage of energy – and ideas of how to fill the time. More plans were made with more ideas than we could fit into the day.

Now we struggle to get an idea. We get up and have no idea what to wear, no idea what to eat for breakfast, no idea how we will get to work on time, no idea what to tackle first, no idea how we’ll get through the day …

Why?

We’re not ready for ideas. We put our minds in a state that doesn’t welcome ideas. Ideas don’t pop into closed minds, irritated minds, grumpy minds. As many creative experts say, ideas come to those that expect them.

Getting ideas is not about superior creative brainpower – it’s about accepting the fact that you are more than capable of developing ideas and that you will do so.

If you have no idea, you will have no idea.

No Such Thing As Useless Information

What is it about life that allows some people to be creative and not others? Or, more specifically, some people interested in being creative and others not.

In thinking about this, I decided to examine my past all the way back to the log cabin and realized:

I loved maps; listening to faraway baseball games on my transistor radio (nothing like a crackling Ernie Harwell); the book series on space exploration at my grandparents’ house; my copy of Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels (from 1941, so much so that I bought the book on eBay a few years back); my first almanac in 1970; the private pilot manual I bought when I was 12; the chemistry set my parents bought me in the early 70s (the first thing I did was go into the back yard and just mix EVERYTHING together. I lived); zip codes; the dud Comet Kohoutek; baseball stats, including the ones I invented; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and the Senate Watergate hearings as a 13-year-old.

What does this say, other than affirm what my kids think – I was a bit of a nerd growing up? It said I had – and still have – an insatiable curiosity about the world. I had to know. And still do. (Before you label me, I also played baseball, basketball, football and ice hockey).

If a strong aspect of creativity is the ability to connect the unconnectable and link the unlinkable, doesn’t it make sense to fill a kid’s mind with as stuff as possible? The more stuff, the more links. The stuff commonly known as useless information – that suddenly becomes useful.

So, I say to parents: let the kids watch cartoons. Let them explore. Let them ask. (Please!!) Let them read … anything. I’m not saying create a nerd; I asking that you raise kids that are curious about what’s down the block, around the corner, in the next town and in the nearest galaxy. It's okay to mix in video games -- in fact, limits are actually hard to enforce.

You never know when the Banana Splits will help you sell the next product.

Thoughts?