Ep 137 | What Sparks Great Ideas?

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today I want to discuss how to come up with ideas, how to come up with ideas, and specifically great ideas. So what are the things that we could be doing to inspire, motivate, encourage, create good ideas, great ideas? See, most of those listening to the No Days Off podcast, most of our group, most of the nation, the No Days Off nation, we all are striving to be massively successful in our respective worlds. And as we know, a lot of success, especially in business, but a lot of success comes from our ideas, comes from the ways that we creatively solve problems, the ways that we, we capitalize on opportunities. The way we go about doing that starts with a good idea, with a great idea, and then build momentum and a plan and a strategy around that. That idea and we capitalize on it. So, so I think it's a really good focusing question. How do you come up with great ideas? Here are the things I do that, that seem to work for me when I'm trying to solve for a challenge and need a good idea to do so, or I'm just, you know, looking to be inspired so that maybe my next big project or, or, or big opportunity can come about. So first, I think, uh, it is mandatory that if you want to come up with some great ideas, you've got to be constantly growing, but specifically you've got to be growing your mind, your knowledge through reading. I think any type of book, by the way, just reading and/or listening to books or podcasts. So I think just the idea of looking outside yourself, reading and being inspired by the words of others or listening and just getting the thoughts of others sparks creativity in you. I can, you know, speaking for me, I can't help but, but come up with some ideas, some of which are great, some of which are probably terrible. Every single time I'm reading, when I read the Wall Street Journal in the morning, it prompts me to think about a variety of things going on in my world. And sometimes I come up with a good idea as a result. When I'm reading a book at night, yeah, I want to educate myself, grow my knowledge, but it's also influencing, impacting the ideas, the ways I go about, you know, handling challenges throughout my world. Or listening. When I'm running in the morning and I'm listening to a podcast, sometimes I don't even know, you know, I don't even pay very close attention to the content, but maybe it's a word or a phrase that makes me, you know, kind of go within myself and start thinking about different projects and whatnot going on in my world. So I think just reading or listening creates energy, creates momentum to coming up with a great idea. That being said, it's important to mention, I'm a big fan of using your notes app on your phone or carrying a journal with you and having that notebook, you know, at the ready, because I want to capture that idea as quickly as I can. I am certainly guilty of saying, you know what, I'll remember that when I get home, I'll write it down, and I've forgotten it. It's driven me nuts, right? So I refuse to have that happen. So I will stop my run if I come up with something that makes sense, and I'll document it. The next way to come up with great ideas: ask bigger and better questions. I think this is one that, that we probably don't give enough credit to. The bigger the question, the better the question, the bigger and better the response that you're going to get. So if you want to come up with a great idea, it starts with asking a great question first. So I'm a big fan of thinking time. We've talked about thinking time on previous episodes at No Days Off. I think the quality of that question that you ask during thinking time is what's going to generate the most impact. The quality of the ideas that come about. So if you want to come up with great ideas, question everything, but ask big questions in doing so, right? Ask big questions. It's not, why does this happen this way? But what, you know, what happened before it that caused these actions? Or, or how could this have gone differently? These little, like, changes in words, just a word or two in a sentence, changes the power of the question altogether. The next thing I look at, if I want to come up with some great ideas, I aim to cross-pollinate. What does that mean? I look for inspiration in other areas, other fields, things that you may think have nothing to do with your particular area in which you're trying to come up with an idea, but I'll look outside of my field. So for example, if I'm in real estate and I have a challenge or I need to come up with an idea with respect to, you know, my business in the real estate sector, I'll look at sports sometimes. I'll look at, you know, uh, the financial sector. I'll look at art or music, right? Like I will pick up books that have nothing to do with running business in real estate, but just the inspiration and the creativity and the ideas coming out of that, you know, I may find are very applicable, applicable in my real estate world. So I want to cross-pollinate. I want to look for inspiration in other fields. Next, for me, I think it's really important if I'm trying to come up with ideas, I got to create more silence. I got to create less mental velocity. And the way I go about doing that is by changing my environment, particularly by going out and walking in the middle of nowhere or hiking, or just getting out of the world in which I do all my busiest work. Just a change of environment, sitting outside, You know, seeing something new, like new, that new, like a new environment from what you're accustomed to seeing creates ideas. It's inspiring. Another thing you could do to create, you know, great ideas. We've talked about the law of inversion. Think about a problem or the problem, I should say, in this particular scenario, think about the problem in reverse, right? Think about it in reverse. Begin with the end in mind. Or think about what would happen if you did the opposite of what you're currently doing. So I'm looking to reverse engineer. So instead of saying, for example, I want to go sell 500 widgets next year, I might ask a question. What would stand in the way of me selling 500 widgets next year? And through asking that kind of inverted question, it will prompt new ideas around how I could go accomplish that mission. So use inversion, starting with the end in mind, working backwards, reverse engineering, or identifying those things that could potentially lead to failure will spark ideas that lead to success. The next one I'll give you before I get to one final one, stand in front of the whiteboard with a marker in hand and don't move. Sounds kind of goofy when you're like, how do I come up with great ideas? Stand in front of a whiteboard with your— with the marker in hand and just stand there. There's a great quote by a writer, an author, Somerset Maugham, who says, "I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at 9 o'clock sharp." What he was talking about, you know, he'd sit down in front of the typewriter and that was his job. And at some point inspiration would strike. Same sort of thing here. Stand in front of a whiteboard. You have some thoughts in mind, marker in hand, and don't move until you start brainstorming, brain dumping some ideas. Eventually one of them is bound to be half decent. And the last thing I would look at in terms of creating great ideas, and this is certainly a theme at No Days Off, we talk about this quite a bit. I'd ask you the question, who are you hanging out with? Who are you spending the most time with? If you want to come up with great ideas, you got to spend time with people who are on a similar mission, also looking to come up with great ideas. Your environment matters. If you're thinking, if you're sitting around a bunch of big thinkers and you're spending time with a lot of big thinkers who are committed to solving big problems, you can't help but do the same. Let's say the opposite. If you're sitting around people that don't have no, no desire to come up with a great groundbreaking idea, you're sitting around with people who tend to be more role players than drivers and creators. Naturally, you're going to fall in line with that group. So if you want to come up with great ideas, be sure to take a look at your surroundings, specifically those you're hanging out with, and recognize if you're around a group of thinkers, you might turn into one yourself. So the focusing question today, how do you come up with great ideas? You know, what, what of the things I just shared, what can you start to apply to your world? That'll influence your thinking and prompt you to solve some really big problems through ideas. If you've got some things, by the way, that I don't have on my list, I'd love to hear them. So shoot me a text, shoot me an email, you know, go to the No Days Off Podcast, uh, uh, Instagram account, send us a message there. Send me a message on Instagram. You know where to find me. I'm serious. I'm super curious to hear how you're coming up with great ideas. 'Cause maybe, just maybe, we all need to apply that to our respective worlds. That's all we have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.