If You Can’t Come up With a Good Idea, Combine the Other Two Ideas.

No matter how long you stare at this blank page, it won’t give you the perfect idea you need. However, if you run into a creative hurdle, try combining two common (or bad!) Ideas together to see how you can recombine them.

The New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff explains this concept of combining other ideas to create new ones as “sex ideas.” It’s as simple as it is visual: take two concepts, whether or not they belong together, and see what you can make of them. The exercise itself can help you unleash your creativity:

“Ideas give rise to ideas,” he says. “The classic technique is to put things together that don’t fit together,” he says. He begins to riff, suggesting a potential cartoon setting: heaven. It has clouds, gates and Saint Peter. This is the place where people want to go, but getting there is difficult. Maybe Mankoff will make heaven a nightclub with a bouncer? “Or there is barbed wire in heaven above to keep unregistered angels out,” continues Mankoff. “Or there is an easy lane in the sky and people are flying over it.”

In fact, staring at a blank page is the worst thing you can do . If you are writing, try to imagine two alien characters. If you’re in the business of designing, pick one or two colors and see how you can combine them to create an eye-catching image. The goal is to stop waiting for inspiration to come and start mixing up ideas until a brilliant idea comes along.

Sex Idea: How New York City Cartoonists Generate 500 Ideas A Week | 99u

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