Coaching practices for I Treat Every Idea on My List as Its Own Separate Thing Judging Each One Solo and it Never Occurs to Me to Mash Two of Them Together So I Keep Missing That the Strongest Option is Probably Some Hybrid Sitting Right There Between Two I Already Have
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For I Treat Every Idea on My List as Its Own Separate Thing Judging Each One Solo and it Never Occurs to Me to Mash Two of Them Together So I Keep Missing That the Strongest Option is Probably Some Hybrid Sitting Right There Between Two I Already Have, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I treat every idea on my list as its own separate thing, judging each one solo, and it never occurs to me to mash two of them together
- I have two separate things that each work fine on their own, and I keep sensing that the real idea is in mashing them into one
- I grab the first idea that pops up and start poking holes in it immediately, so I never get more than two or three options on the table
- Every time I try to brainstorm, the critic and the dreamer are talking over each other
- Even after all this work I notice I’m gravitating right back to the safe, familiar combinations and skipping the strange ones
Practices that may help
- Combine and build on others’ ideas
Treat every idea as a building block — the best ideas in a session are usually hybrids.
Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical - Combine
Ask: what two things — purposes, materials, functions, or ideas — could be merged to create something new?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Ideate — generate options before judging
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Design Thinking, Step by Step - Separate divergence from convergence sessions
Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Deliberately explore the most unlikely combinations
The combinations intuition skips are precisely the ones the method is designed to find.
Morphological Analysis, Made Practical - Go for quantity first
Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Balance divergent with convergent thinking
Treat creativity as two phases — open up to generate, then close down to select.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Generate solutions without premature evaluation
List as many potential solutions as possible before judging any of them.
Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical - Defer judgment during generation
Generate ideas with no criticism, then evaluate in a separate pass.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - The obvious veto: reject the first three ideas before keeping any
Force yourself to generate more by vetoing the first plausible ideas — they are almost always the most obvious ones.
Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Divergent Thinking Generating Many Ideas As A Caregiver
Divergent thinking is generating many varied ideas before judging any of them — the opposite of converging on one answer. The most reliable practical principle is to separate idea generation from evaluation. An honest caveat: traditional group brainstorming usually underperforms the same people working alone and pooling ideas, due to a documented productivity loss.
- Divergent Thinking Generating Many Ideas On A Budget
Divergent thinking is generating many varied ideas before judging any of them — the opposite of converging on one answer. The most reliable practical principle is to separate idea generation from evaluation. An honest caveat: traditional group brainstorming usually underperforms the same people working alone and pooling ideas, due to a documented productivity loss.
- Idea Generation Techniques
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Ideate — generate options before judging
- When Inversion Thinking Invert The Goal
Ask "what would guarantee I fail at this?" before asking how to succeed.
State the goal, then invert it
- Defer Judgment Brainstorming
Separate generating ideas from evaluating them — criticism comes later, never during.
Defer judgment during ideation
- Divergent Convergent Thinking
Divergent thinking is generating many varied ideas before judging any of them — the opposite of converging on one answer. The most reliable practical principle is to separate idea generation from evaluation. An honest caveat: traditional group brainstorming usually underperforms the same people working alone and pooling ideas, due to a documented productivity loss.
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