shindar1016

Tool #2  Ask Questions Earlier Than Usual

Main Idea

    It’s human nature to wait until the last possible moment to do something. In a creative field, however, waiting until the last possible minute robs you of many opportunities to have your subconscious suggest a more creative way to do something.

    Therefore, the idea is to ask questions that make you think earlier rather than later. If you’ve posed the question early with plenty of time to think things through, your chances of coming up with something good increase.

    Note in addition to stimulating original thinking, this tool also as a good time management system, You become a better thinker because you’ve given yourself more opportunities to be inspired and more opportunities for that flash of brilliance to materialize.

How Do You Actually Do This??

    Try formulating your questions one week before a solution is needed. By giving yourself more time to think about it, you’ll have thousands more opportunities for a creative idea to come to mind.

    Even if you physically plan on starting work on a project a little closer to when it needs to be done, visit the key problem in your mind first. This has the effect of injecting that problem into your subconscious. Then, little things that happen can trigger an” Aha!” moment--- when a creative solution to the problem suddenly pops into your mind.

    To really get good at this:

●    When you first get an assignment, spend about 20-minutes thinking it through as soon as possible.

●    Every day, try and spend about 5-minute giving some thought to the problem.

●    One week before your deadline, sit down and think through the problem intensively for 20-minutes or so.

●    Write down all the ideas you get.

Examples

    How long does it take you to think of the solution to a problem? Quite often, it’s less than a second. Therefore, most people leave developing a solution until the last possible minute.

Consider this:

◎    There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Therefore, if you start working on a solution a day earlier than normal, you have 86,400 chances to think of better solution.

◎    There are 604,800 seconds in a week. Again, if you start working on a problem a week before your deadline, you have more than a half a million opportunities to come up with an original idea.

◎    Your subconscious mind process information even faster than your conscious mind. By thinking about a problem early, even the time spent sleeping can be applied to the challenge of coming up with fresh and original ideas. Now that’s impressive.