I have just read James Web Young’s ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas‘.
If you are looking for the holy grail of ideas this may not be what you thought you’d learn. But, as with other classics like Mortimer J. Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’, James Young has detailed clearly and concisely the principles and steps you can take to produce great ideas.
It helps explain why taking long walks (with a note pad or dictaphone) are so useful for revealing ideas. I find shaving in the shower an excellent place as well, but jotting notes down is less easy.
If you are in the business of discovering ideas and presenting the solutions (and thanks again to the giants whose shoulders you are walking on and reordering the ideas of others into new formluations and orbits) you should buy this book.
It reveals a technique you can make to work for you.
Thanks to Farnam Street for another great book recommendation.
Update
A Technique for Producing Ideas
I read through this short-paged classic by James Webb Young a few day’s ago.
If you don’t want to read the excellent book, that is a shame, but the author provides a summary of his technique, which I summarise at the end.
Ideas for Ideas Workers
Ideas are the life – blood of knowledge workers, although you may doubt that from what you have seen.
Ideas are built on the work of others. They are built on the shoulders of colleagues, writers, and those who have walked before us. The trick is to bring new combinations of ideas together to bring about solutions, to provide answers to questions being asked, and indeed more importantly the answers to the questions not being asked.
Not For the Lazy
Young emphasizes that producing good ideas is not for the faint hearted or lazy. Good ideas require a lot of work.
It requires you to develop your experience, by drawing on different threads and bringing them together. Great minds are Universalists, intrigued and delighted in many disciples, and constantly delving out to new experiences and disciplines. Think of Feynman as an ideal, rather than hermetically sealed academics.
A Helping Hand
Young recommends a scrapbook. A good option today is evernote.
He also promotes the use of a card index. He notes:
“This is simply to get yourself a supply of those little 3 X 5 ruled white cards and use them to write down the items of specific information as you gather them. If you do this, one item to a card, after a while you can begin to classify them by sections of your subject. Eventually you will have a whole file box of them, neatly classified.”
This will allow you to reference and cross reference different pieces of information.
We know all information is related somehow. The only difficulty is connecting the dots. And, the cards, and with evernote, help you connect those dots faster than you could have hoped.
Reading
In practice, the best solution to better ideas is by reading. Warren Buffet, and his business partner, Charlie Munger, swears by this one technique.
Getting Away
The importance of walking away from the research is made a few times. Going for a long walk or cycle, sleeping on it, doing something very different, are key to allow the brain to process the information, turn it upside down, and create order.
Somethings I Learned
I enjoyed reading Young’s work. It confirmed some of my existing practices. It showed that getting my best ideas in the shower in the morning was a very good thing.
It suggested some other steps I should add – going for long walk and cycle rides.
It provides a powerful, clear and simple technique to unleash good ideas.
I hope that schools and Universities will get around to giving this book to everyone.
The Process
1. The gathering of raw materials-both the materials of your immediate problem and the materials which come from a constant enrichment of your store of general knowledge.
2.The working over of these materials in your mind.
3. The incubating stage, where you let something beside the conscious mind does the work of synthesis.
4. The actual birth of the Idea-the “Eureka! I have it!” stage.
5. The final shaping and development of the idea to practical usefulness.