THE PRINCIPLE

While focusing on the project at hand, have a way to capture other ideas

One question I get asked a lot – and I’m guessing you do, too – is: ‘Where do you get all your ideas?’ Sometimes I say there’s an ideas store in a basement in Soho.

The question always amuses me because for most creative people having enough ideas is not a problem. Having enough time to realise those ideas is the problem.

However, our tendency to have lots of ideas can sometimes become a trap. It can easily take our attention away from the project that should be getting most of our energy at that point. Especially when things aren’t going so well, the thought of jumping to a new project is very tempting. At the same time, we don’t want to be so totally absorbed with the current project that we let great new ideas get away.

The solution is an Ideas Box. This is simply a box, or a box file, or a folder in which you store ideas for future use. Whenever you have a new idea that is not relevant to your current project, jot it down on a piece of paper or an index card and drop it into your Ideas Box. If you’re having a lot of ideas about a particular project, give it its own box.

When I read her wonderful book, The Creative Habit, I discovered that choreographer Twyla Tharp does something similar. She starts every dance with a box labelled with the project name and then drops into it everything that has anything to do with her research for that work. This could include notebooks, CDs, news clippings, videotapes, and so forth.

The only difference is that I’m suggesting creating such a box before you start working on the project formally, as a way to capture ideas.

When you finish your current project, you can go through the contents of your Ideas Box and decide which of the many notions should be next to be turned into an exciting reality.