Kill your darlings deliberately

Identify the idea you’re most attached to, then set it aside first.

Why it works

The ideas we love most are often the ones we generated first — familiarity inflates their perceived quality. Because first ideas draw on the most available (not the best) associations, attachment to them prematurely closes the search. Deliberately setting aside the favorite forces the search to continue into less traveled, often better, territory.

How to do it

1. After a generation session, star the idea you like most.
2. Set that starred idea aside temporarily and continue generating as if it doesn’t exist.
3. Return to it at the end — sometimes it wins, but often a later idea surpasses it.

Evidence

Research on idea fixation shows that initial ideas anchor subsequent generation and that continued exposure to early ideas suppresses later, more original ones — supporting the value of deliberately releasing the first "good" option. Smith, Ward, & Schumacher (1993) demonstrated this causally: participants shown an early example conformed their later ideas to it even when told to diverge, so deliberately setting the favorite aside is what reopens the search. (observational)

Fixation research comes largely from design lab tasks; generalizability to longer, complex creative work is extrapolated.

Sources

• Jansson & Smith (1991), design fixation and the effects of examples on creative output, Design Studies
• Jansson, D. G., & Smith, S. M. (1991). Design fixation. Design Studies, 12(1), 3-11.
• Smith, S. M., Ward, T. B., & Schumacher, J. S. (1993). Constraining effects of examples in a creative generation task. Memory & Cognition, 21(6), 837-845.

Common mistake

Confusing "setting it aside" with "abandoning it" — the point is to delay commitment, not to discard; your darling often survives and is better for the comparison.