Use this psychological brain hack to trick your brain into working harder on your ideas in the background.
How to Generate Better Ideas by Trying Less
The fastest way to solve an idea is to leave it unfinished.
Let me explain. We often think that if we just sit ourselves down in the chair and put some deep work into our idea for 4 hours that we’ll solve our creative blocks.
I’ve found this to be less than effective.
In fact these days I do the opposite. When I have an idea to work on, I leave it in as unfinished state as possible. And then I let me brain do the work in the background.
And there’s actually a psychological reason this works. It’s called The Ziegarnik Effect. The idea that our brain lingers more on unfinished tasks & ideas than on completed ones.
AKA your brain is wired to dwell on ideas you leave open.
The more ideas you leave open the more your brain goes to work doing what it naturally does.
- Continually working in the background
- Getting curious and exploring different angles
- Making connections between random things
