Ideas – the first step of a concept.
Ideas are a result of mental activity or a mind at work.
You may have learned, heard and/or read that the TED platform and conferences is “devoted to spreading ideas.”
If you did not know this, then you were not listening or reading mindfully.
Serendipitously, TED the idea network, started in 1984, the same year that your older relatives —you know, the ones you think are not too savvy— proved to be the innovators in the computing world with an eye on friendly personal computing…another great idea. Now imagine our world without that one. Innovations would be minimal: our televisions would still be cathode tubes flickering screens at a low resolution; banking would still be personal (that could be the better option); shopping would be still brick-and-mortar based; letter correspondences would still require a sticky currency called a stamp; phones would be connected to walls by a wire. Do I need to present more examples?
Ideas. We all have them though you may not believe you do. I think we may just not notice that we do.
I bet you have said before that something was stupid. Right? Aw, this song sounds stupid. My stupid laptop computer or digital book is not working. Having homework is stupid. There you have an opinion, but that opinion had to come from some thought reaction in your head.
Chuck Close in an interview with The Atlantic, 2011 said “every idea comes out of something your are already doing.” Your mind is at work reacting to this and many other stimulus. Your mind at work results in a concept which we have earlier defined as an idea.
You must have had an idea for your reason of why it is stupid, or you would not have that opinion in the first place.
So, ideas. I think we forget that we have them….not that we do not have them.
Here is a big challenge: come up with an idea.
What?! You want me to do what?! An idea just like that?
Right.
True the alarm of this overwhelming effort may be our first response. But we are more responsive to the embarrassment of not developing a successful or an impressive idea. It is this pressure to come up with one sometimes that enlivens the roadblock. But ignore that perspective that all ideas have to be successful or impressive. Forget about the responsibility that our ideas need to be productive, profitable or super creative and imaginative. Just come up with an idea.
Five minutes later: NOPE, I don’t have one.
Of course you may not have an idea that you will recognize as one. But what if you had one a while ago and you did not recognize it. What if you had an idea that fluttered in your thoughts and you completely did not concentrate on it. It became a fizzled dream in your short-term memory. Now I have to remember, remember, reeeeee…..NOPE. I just plain forgot.
Of course, not everybody can remember especially considering we did not make the effort to solidify it into memory. Nor could we recall it when we are on the spot to do so (maybe you could look at the tip of my tongue, because I can’t).
But what if I had recorded it. What if I just believed that this one fleeting moment could later have some relevance or significance. At the current moment, this idea does not relate to anything but it may in the future. And to have it for the future, well then I could just pull out a trusting notebook and record it with a pen. Then one day sometime in the future there may be that question, or wish or “what if” that will spark a revelation into that old idea.
I heard a Paul Simon NPR interview that supports this action. He will write random phrases that sporadically come in his mind. His notebook becomes a library of words and phrases that he finds interesting or a response to a clever inspiration. He stated that his songs are usually written by the melody first and then he hits his notebook for lyric phrases to fit the melody. Count the amount of hits this musical artist has. Now you cannot say he is not smart in his process—writing ideas for future use.
Ideas—we all have them; you might not think so, but if you took the time to record it and look at it later, you would see that you do have them. Your mind at work.