50 Benefits of Forcing Yourself to Think of 50 Ideas
Even bad ideas make you better.
I dare you to come up with 50 ideas.
Think about a problem you want to solve, an issue you hope to overcome, or a message you want to convey and write down 50 ideas of how you can do so.
When you commit to generating 50 ideas for something, here’s what happens:
- You have good ideas.
- You have bad ideas.
- You push yourself.
- You get frustrated.
- You want to give up.
- You learn not to give up.
- You discover “hard” isn’t “impossible.”
- You discover you’re not as good at generating ideas as you think.
- You discover you’re better at generating ideas than you think.
- You recognize the value of process.
- You realize the power of goals.
- You surprise yourself when you push past the obvious.
- You realize how rarely you do deep thinking.
- You stop judging yourself.
- You become ok with just being ok.
- Your mind drifts off subject.
- Your mind drifts into new areas where you discover new things.
- You become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
- You stop caring what others will think about your ideas.
- You wonder how many other things you do could be improved by forcing yourself to generate 50 ideas for them.
- You wonder if you’ve settled for easy ideas too often.
- You realize you could generate 100 ideas if you had to.
- You realize brainstorming doesn’t have to be a collective activity.
- You realize ideas come in spurts.
- You focus.
- You count. Repeatedly.
- You gain a new respect for the number 50.
- You get a sense of accomplishment.
- You wind up in a better place than when you started.
- You believe writer’s block is a myth.
- Your ideas become more genuine.
- You break ideas down to their smallest parts.
- You sit in silence.
- You find inspiration in your surroundings.
- You find different angles in the problem.
- You reach a point where even bad ideas feel good.
- You see the value of bad ideas.
- You reframe the question.
- You realize most people don’t do this and few ever have.
- You wonder if there’s a magic number of ideas that unleashes the best ones.
- You realize your 41st idea has as much chance of being great as your first.
- You see the faults in your initial premise.
- You also see its strengths.
- You build momentum.
- You wonder if it’s this hard for other people.
- You get tempted to distract yourself with social media or email.
- You want to tell others to try it.
- You look forward to the revision process.
- You realize anything is possible.
- You discover you can do it.
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