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Ideas.

Work.

Productivity.

Creativity.

We all need more and more of all these in our lives today. Agreed? We all want to get creative ideas to be productive and more creative in life. In this post, we’ll take a brief look and find out how to get new ideas when nothing seems to be working.

WHY AND HOW TO GET NEW IDEAS?

We want more ideas because the old ones are getting pretty old pretty fast, and latest trends rise and fall everyday. We want methods we can adopt to do more hard and smart work, because it’s pretty obvious with the competition in today’s world that its hard reaching the top.

We want to increase our productivity and learn how to build assets in the form of wealth that earn while we sleep. Last but not the least, it’s fun living life creatively. We all should try to adopt a little more of it in our everyday routines.

So, I guess all of us people have these unique, weird and definitely crazy ideas regarding what sets their souls on fire and send their thoughts on a frenzy.

There were some very weird ways famous people used to increase their focus and get their work done. For instance, Jonathan Franzen, an author of fiction novels, in addition to eliminating social media from his life, works with a blindfold to increase his concentration. That’s his way to get creative.

Beethoven developed his ideas in the bathroom.

Charles Dickens used to solve morgue mysteries to train his brain.

I do not use all of these extreme tactics, and I doubt many people do either. Like, come on, solving dead people’s crimes is creepy that messes you up some way or the other.

But we all have some of that personal list of crazy ideas that we need some time or the other in life when we’re stuck in a creative rut.

It’s hard finding creativity and new ideas in today’s world. Many ways of doing this don’t even work.

Though the most common ones I employ are thinking up my stories while showering, talking to myself about planned blog posts while doing daily chores (that’s called a staff meeting!), and outlining my novel in my mind while trying to sleep at night.

While these aren’t crazy at all and I bet all writers do this, following are five of the biggest, most-liked ways I’ve ever used.

Because we all, no matter what we do, who we are, what our interests may be, some time or the other, need to find new ideas to get our work done.

That’s easy since in today’s society, it’s really a momentary and common thing to get angry at something or the other. If you are walking down the street and you see something that bothers you, you’ll obviously get angry at that—be it any form of injustice or abuse you see happening.

Chances are that someone with the exact opposite philosophy and psychology than you would be the one doing something to make you furious.

There’s no problem with losing your calm sometimes, there’s no problem with having a bad temperament if you can’t control it. The problem arises when your bad temperament harms someone else in the way; when you don’t really mean to, but end up taking that anger out on someone, or when maybe you intentionally vent it out.

But, if you ask me, I’d say, get angry. Become a beast. Roar and beat at your chest with your fists if you want. Anger is toxic.

In fact, anger is like holding a hot ball of fire in your hands, waiting to throw it at somebody. Buddha said it first.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

-Buddha

It harms you, so its only fair if you let the anger flow out of your system. Get angry at something. Get angry at the whole world if you can. But then, don’t say anything. When you are angry, just shut up and do your work.

Yesterday, I watched the news; I was pissed off. Then, in the next twenty minutes, I scribbled down a chapter of my novel that I had been putting off since long. I completed it because I was angry. I was so angry at the world, the politicians, the stupid society, and the people that I let out all my pent up frustration on the paper.

2 | COMPLAIN TO THE WORLD. SILENTLY.

Complain about the way other people make software by making software.

-Andre Torrez

If someone’s doing something the wrong way, show them how it’s done the right way. You only get the right to call someone else wrong if you’ve the right solution in your hands.

Read that again.

If I don’t like something or someone, and I feel like complaining about them won’t get me anywhere, I just shut my mouth and start doing my work. It’s, in a way, to show them how it’s done.

It’s exactly like showing someone they’re wrong by giving them the right answer. And it’s so self-reassuring, so soothing to be proud of yourself for being able to do your work (with just being angry at someone!). It’s a really effective method. You should try it sometime.

If you want a new idea, read an old book.

-Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

New Ideas change the world. Old ones, of course as we all see, didn’t.

If old ideas could change the world, someone else would’ve already done it, and we wouldn’t have needed to do so. But unfortunately, as the world progresses and things and trends change everyday, dynamics and personalities dwindle, it’s safe to say that we all need to keep ourselves updated so that we do not lag behind.

To find new Ideas, pick up the oldest book on the shelf. Seriously, for new blog post ideas I sift through the books and land my fingers on the one which has collected the most dust.

In fact, the last time I did that I ended up writing this blog post: The Third World War: Is It Going To Be Colossal? (The book was a collection of speeches and I got the idea by reading Adolf Hitler’s speech).

That’s how you get ideas. Sometimes you stare into nature, or into people’s personalities, or sometimes you don’t do either and just stare into an old book.

There are tons of old books out there, with ancient knowledge and all that, and many times, we just forget to notice, but the answers are right in front of us.

4 | DON’T SHARE YOUR PLANS

One major advice I’d give to everyone who’s ever wanted to do something and then never gotten around to it (despite many tries), is to never tell anyone about your plans.

It’s true. Like, keep quiet about them. Just shut your damn mouth.

Your plans and goals are your own to achieve, and it’s never going to make them more achievable if you show them off.

It’s better to just work in silence and not overshare. Keep the mystery. Keep the anticipation. Don’t talk about goals and dreams you haven’t achieved yet in front of people.

One easy trick to do this, is to make it a point never to say I’m going to. Say, I have.

It never gets old.

Waking up at 5 a.m. is like waking up in the golden hour because the whole world is quiet and only in silence do you begin to hear yourself.

I made it a point to start My Formula for Changing the World early mornings because in those hours when my brain was half asleep and half active, and there were no outer distractions, I could finally begin to hear snippets of what I wanted the formula to be.

Even if you want to think greater than yourself and think about making some positive differences in the world, this is your time to observe the world.

Figure out what things to change in it and what things to leave out.

It’s not always necessary to think exactly like a community does.

I believe you’ve already heard about the Solomon Asch’s conformity experiment. Here’s what it was about:

The Asch’s conformity experiments were a series of psychological experiments conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. The main observation behind it was that people were more inclined to conform to the views of a group than to stand by their own judgements. The experiment involved two groups of people: the first consisted of those who were a part of the experiment themselves and who pretended to be regular participants, alongside the second group who were the actual subjects.

The participants were then shown a diagram like this.

Then they were asked to choose the one line from set B that was the exact match as set A.

The participants who were being directed by the experiment scientists purposely chose the wrong answer, even though it was obvious which was the right one. And here’s the really exciting, and also really embarrassing part: 75% of the actual subjects of the study, having known the correct answer, still chose the option that the majority went with. The rest of the 25% luckily didn’t let themselves get influenced by the incorrect standards of the majority and chose the correct option according to themselves.

This proved how people were more likely to conform to the collective views of a group (even if they were wrong) than to choose their own right solutions.

This experiment clearly shows how everything in a community is connected and how our psychology is designed to act as a group. We humans are wired to act and perform as a community because that’s what we are taught to be since the very beginning. That’s what we have grown up to be.

What we can learn from this experiment is how the human population has a certain way it has to act.

This is also kind of a warning that if we always act according to what the other majority is doing, we might end up doing it wrong.

A new way to get ideas is to think like the 25 % people who stood by their opinions even when everyone else was choosing the other option.

If we are working with the crowd too, we might just forget all our chances of ever changing the world or bringing a difference for the better. We must think like the other 25%. We must have our own opinions, and must stand by them even if everyone is opposed to us.

So these were the 5 weirdly personal methods I have some time or the other used to get creative and new ideas in my life. This is my own solution to be productive.

But I’m proud to say that I’m not alone in this. All of us, at some time or the other, have done similarly crazy things to do something at any stage of life. So what are your crazy ideas? What is your weird streak? Let’s share!

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READ MORE:

How to Learn to be Kind to Yourself: 10 Beautiful Self-Care Tips.

The Third World War: Is It Going To Be Colossal?