Find Success with Little Ideas

On my Ideas Website Somebody commented that they had been in their car when they saw somebody wearing a really warm coat. Knowing the brand she then went on to create a Squidoo Lens on it which became her first successful lens with lots of traffic and page views. She then used that as a model to build many more clothing based websites which have all done well.

She said that when she had her first "brainwave" that she'd parked her at the first opportunity and wrote down some notes. Oak trees grow from tiny acorns, and business success often grows from tiny ideas.

Moral : Wrote down your Ideas immediately!

Creativity Related to Insanity

Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists who have been studying how the mind works.

Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.

Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.

It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to "think outside the box", say experts from Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

In some people, it leads to mental illness. The trick is to insane enough to have brilliant ideas but sane enough to use them. There have certainly been cases where people considered mentally sub-normal have suddenly come out with a brilliant insight. Savants (people capable of astonishing memory and mental calculation) like the rain man also cross the boundary. Creative people often have have or feat they have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).

In truth many of us have to manage our focus (ADD) sufficiently in such a way we can pursue a career and pay our bills and still find outlets for our creativity.

Barbara Sher discovered that once creative people recognize and accept the fact that they are Scanners they can learn to live with and even take advantage of their lack of focus and inability to lead projects to fruition.

Many Idea Creators are Scanners

Many people good at creating ideas suffer at the same time from being scanners, that means they cannot focus on one thing at a time or more accurately cannot see a project through to fruition before they they throw themselves headfirst into the next best thing.

One suggestion by Babara Sher is to start a Scanner Daybook, use this to note down all your various ideas as soon as they appear . When you are distracted by a tangential idea write it down and in this way "get it out of your system" then return to your previous task. 

Having tried many notebook solutions I now prefer a simple text file which I can email to my cell-phone as required. This contains my ideas, my to-dos and anything else that I think of. I have found over the years that anything more complicated seems to fall by the way side sooner or later.

Whatever your preference  the Number One Rule of Idea Creation is to get that IDEA written down, ideas that continuously churn around in your head are just wasting your "computer power" and blocking you from thinking of something even better. No you must get ideas out where you came see them in the daylight so you can begin to evaluate any flaws.

If you want to learn how to deal with your seeming  lack of focus and see if you are a scanner then read this review "Are you a Scanner?"

Are Ideas Created in a Day-Dreaming Mist?

Some of the best ideas are where you suddenly see a way of exploiting a resource, something that you've been under utilizing. Any way I was partly dozing this Sunday afternoon and it occurred to me that I could create a Squidoo lens on Turnips which would be a jokey lens on the vegetable itself and people who make mistakes. Now even if you consider that it wasn't a particularly brilliant idea, it is for me because I earn an increasing amount from Squidoo Lens and am always after one which might capture peoples imaginations.

Anyway as befits an Idea-Smith I immediately tried to see if I could capture the train of thought which produced the idea, no luck, I couldn't seem to rewind my memory of just a few seconds ago. The Turnip idea didn't come out of the blue because I'd already invented/created the concept of a Squidoo Turnip in another Squidoo Lens, so my subconscious must have brought it up the the surface and a conscious part of my brain must have "grabbed it".

So once again the actual moment of idea creation was lost, furthermore when I tried to recall it, I seemed to run into a barrier!

Creative Daydreaming Or How We Create Ideas

When we are traveling or waiting somewhere our minds drift into daydream mode. This is when we mull over past events, our hopes, worries, obligations we need to fulfill and so on, the mind might be thought to be in freewheel mode. It is during this process that we often have our best ideas in fact we are unconsciously modeling many situations and every now and again we create a new association between existing two information nodes.

We are always juggling limited resources be they time, money, relationships or energy so we require a stream of ideas to allow us to exploit our resources in the most most efficient manner.


 Many people however spend an enormous amount of a time mulling over past failures or how unfair life is, if any good could come from this it would have done so already, we should therefore try and direct our daydreaming in useful directions. This is one of the chief benefits of the positive thinking that is encouraged by nearly every career and life mentor.

Nearly Caught an Idea at its Birth Today

I've been wearing my walking boots because of the Snow and Ice here in the UK. Anyway I was at the Swimming Pool undoing my laces and was marveling once again at how comfortable and light Boots are today, and then thought I should sell them on the principle that you should only promote things you are enthusiastic about. Then it occurred to me that I run a website called abingdonwalks.co.uk and that would be an excellent place to sell boots probably via Amazon.

I instantly realised tried to recall exactly when and how this idea popped into my head but it was already too late I just got a kind of blur. I've been trying to capture that instant for a while, but it seems elusive.

Creating Ideas Lens Nominated for an Award

My Creating More Ideas Squidoo Lens (mini-Website) is nominated for Best Potential Giant Squid Lens Award which will help publicize my crusade to think of ever more creative ideas. Please vote for it , search for "create more ideas"