How to Come Up with the Best Ideas

An unusual way to let your brain help you.

Switching off my computer and lights in the room, I left the notes on the whiteboard.

Outside was a cold December evening in Sweden. Almost midnight.

After a couple of hours trying to develop a solution for one of my projects, I just gave up. It was too many unknowns and “what if.”

I kept thinking about how to advance those ideas. You know the feeling. It’s not full-time logical thinking. But, no matter what you do, half of your brain is thinking — vague ideas. Your brain is working at full steam. It drains your energy.

After two weeks, suddenly the ideas hit back my conscious mind. They surfaced with confidence. “What Ifs” were gone. Results were clear.

“This is it.” I thought. The ideas seemed feasible. “Wooohooo”

Pushing your brain for a quick logical solution doesn’t always help. The conscious mind has a limited capacity. It can only deal with so many variables at a time.

The trick that may work for you is to “let the problem go.” If you really want the solution, it will never really leave you.

A great man, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once said: “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original…