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.

Why it works

Generative fluency research shows that the most common and familiar associations arrive first, with rarer and more original ones appearing later in the generation sequence. The first ideas that satisfy a brief are also the ideas most likely to already exist — they are obvious because they are the culturally dominant response to the problem. Vetoing the first-arriving plausible ideas is a simple constraint that forces the search deeper into the solution space.

How to do it

1. Set a rule before you start: the first three ideas that arrive are automatically set aside, not rejected, just deferred.
2. Generate a minimum of ten ideas before evaluating any.
3. Then look at the deferred three alongside the later arrivals — some will be genuinely good; most will have an obvious quality that the later ideas lack.
4. Repeat this veto process at the level of concepts within an idea, not just between ideas.

Evidence

Studies of generative fluency find that creative originality scores rise as generation continues — later responses are rated more original by blind evaluators than earlier ones, across word-association and design tasks. (observational)

The Mednick finding is about associative remoteness; the specific "veto first three" protocol is a practitioner rule derived from the principle, not a directly trialed procedure.

Sources

• Mednick (1962), associative basis of the creative process, Psychological Review

Common mistake

Treating the first good idea as a sign that you are done — the first good idea is almost always the most obvious good idea, not the best one.