Start An Idea Journal

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This post is part of a series about making better product decisions.

I have a friend (a skier) who decided that snowboarding needed to be more like skiing. He thought that snowboarding looked fun, but he didn’t want to give up the precision of two skis. Being an engineer, he set out to design a “better” snowboard.

As you can imagine this story is wrought with many pitfalls. Whether or not you ski or snowboard, whatever image you conjure up in your head of each, they are likely to be very different. Even if your only exposure to either sport is via the Winter Olympics, you can still see what I mean.

Culturally, the sports are very different. Skiing draws one crowd. Snowboarding another.

Of course, it’s not this simple. Some people like both. But it’s hard to argue that a snowboard for skiers is a good idea. How many skiers really want to snowboard? How many snowboarders want their snowboards to be more like skis? I’d argue not many.

My friend had many skiing and snowboarding friends. None of us were shy about giving our feedback. But despite luke-warm responses at best, my friend moved forward with his idea.

I bet you have a similar story.

Or maybe you were the one who stubbornly moved forward with an idea even though the world was telling you it wasn’t feasible. I know I have.

Why does this happen?

Consider More Than One Idea At a Time

In Decisive (yup, I’m still writing about this great book), Dan and Chip Heath introduce the idea of multitracking, which means considering more than one idea at the same time. They compared companies that looked at ideas in sequence vs. those who evaluated a set of ideas all at the same time, and the ones who evaluated a set of ideas at the same time made better decisions.

When you evaluate a set of ideas, you get less attached to any one idea. You are able to compare and contrast the qualities of one idea against another. You are able to mix and match elements of each to generate even better ideas.

When you look at ideas one at time, it’s a lot easier to consider each idea as a whether or not decision. And we already know that gets us into trouble. You miss out on the comparison and you get more attached.

Given all these benefits of multitracking, why don’t more companies do it?

Simple, it takes a lot of work. And it feels like wasted work. Why explore ten different paths when you are only going to pick one? It’s in our nature to find solutions. As soon as we find a path that looks like it could work, we tend to want to stay on it.

But if we really want to generate the best options and consistently generate creative ideas, we need to fight this urge. So how can we develop this practice?

Keep an Idea Journal

Start by keeping an idea journal. It turns out you have ideas all the time. But unless you are taking the time to capture them, you are probably forgetting them.

Some people like pen and paper – I know the small Cahier Moleskine notebooks are popular because they easily fit in a back pocket. I use Evernote because I always have my phone with me. But it doesn’t actually matter what you use. It just matters that you start capturing your ideas when they happen.

Idea generation, like most skills, is a skill that gets better the more you do it. The first step is becoming aware of the ideas that you are already having and writing them down. This can be hard. If you aren’t used to capturing your ideas, it can be difficult to remember to take a second and capture them. One step that might help is to devote ten minutes of your day to writing down your ideas. I recommend either the first 10 minutes in the morning or right before you go to bed.

As you start to exercise your idea generation muscle, you’ll become more aware of the ideas you have throughout the day. As you capture them, try to generate related ideas. This will further develop your idea generation skill. Soon ideas will just come naturally, quickly and often.

I learned to keep an idea journal in a design class in college and I’ve done it ever since. Before I started, I like many people, didn’t think I was creative. Keeping an idea journal helped make visible the many ideas I was already having, but also really helped me to develop and build confidence in this skill. You can do the same.

Never consider just one idea at a time. Start keeping an idea journal, so that when you need to, you’ll be able to generate lots of ideas on demand.

What are you doing to exercise your idea generation muscle? Do you keep an idea journal? Please share in the comments. 

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions.