Where ideas come from

Have you experienced cryptomnesia?

It’s where we mistakenly believe a current idea is our own creation when in fact we’ve ‘encountered it previously and then forgotten it,’ (American Psychological Association)

What the heck?!

So some of our blindingly great ideas aren’t that original?

Correct. We’ve gathered them from other places, forgotten about them, woken up one day and thought we’ve had a genius moment!

It's known as 'inadvertent plagiarism' or 'unconscious plagiarism'. And of course there’s outright plagiarism too. 😡

When our ideas have similarity to others, we could be experiencing cryptomnesia, unaware of the sources of our thinking.

We end up replicating existing ideas or we’re influenced by them (unknowingly) when we’re sorting and filtering our thoughts.

The world needs us to be more creative, to solve tricky problems and adapt to changing circumstances.

It’s worth the effort then to be more original ... and it’s also worth the effort to sharpen our own originality so we all diversify the idea pool.

How to be original

In a world of noise, how do you be unique? How do you bring your originality to market through your ideas, products and services?

Some people think they don’t have anything unique to say.
Others believe their ideas aren’t that special.
And others are worried that what they are doing is too similar or close to what others are doing.

Copying is unfortunately too common and not cool.

As much as we might love the work of other people (and wish it were our own or that we were like them), we need to discover, explore and then express our own originality.

The world needs us to be original.

Because the world has a big diversity problem - in workplaces, online content, social media, events and publications the world over.

There is too much same/same.

It is time for more diverse and interesting ideas, and they are needed today more than ever.

What you used to do vs what’s needed now

What did you used to do?
Are you still doing it?
Or has it changed?

Do you do something different now?

What might you be doing next?
What does the world need you to do?

How are you adapting and changing what you can do?

Notice when you have an idea

Do you capture them... the ideas and thoughts you have while you’re reading, listening or thinking? 

We overestimate the number of ideas we think we’ll remember. Our train of thought is interrupted with the mundane ... and boom, the thought is gone! 

Worry less about a perfect system for collecting ideas and start with ANY system! 

> Write a few words on a post it 
> Say a few phrases into a voice memo
> Jot a note in a journal. 

We undervalue the creative thoughts that come to us - either by not noticing them at all, or noticing them but judging them as unworthy.

Still after the perfect system? But having it may not mean you firstly notice when you’re having an idea! We can have a shed of tools and not use them. Or a device of apps we rarely tap!

The point is, to become more aware you’ve had an idea or thought that could be captured ... and could be useful in the future. 

Notice ideas and more ideas will come. 

Running the perfect experiment

Have you got an idea to launch or run something? A concept or possibility that’s not yet real or tangible? 

Let’s take the idea and run an experiment. You know, test some of it out. 

Simple right? Aaah no, not so simple. 

Experiments may be all cool and startup-ish but we can so fear messing up or looking bad that we don’t even attempt an experiment at all!

For all the ‘fail fast’ messages blaring at us, we can find the action of testing something still too big a step to take. 

Are we expecting the perfect experiment? 

Do we keep working tweaking reading learning and writing until we become closer to 100% sure it will work? 

Where is the experiment part then?

Experiments are wonderful for discovery, to find out. If we don’t experiment we won’t find out. No matter how much thinking we put into it. 

It’s the ideal time to try some new and different things ... to discover what happens. 

If not now, when? 

There’s a hypothesis, hunch or idea on your list there. How about donning the lab coat, firing up the Bunsen burner and getting some feedback and insights from a petite experiment? 

I will if you will. 

Ready?