You often need to make it up in your mind before you can make it happen in your life.
Many of us hold ourselves back from imaging a desired outcome unless someone can show us how to get there. Unfortunately, that's backward in terms of how our minds work to generate and recognize solutions and methods.
One of the most powerful skills in the world of knowledge work, and one of the most important to hone and develop, is creating clear outcomes. This is not as self-evident as it may sound. We need to constantly define (and redefine) what we're trying to accomplish on many different levels, and consistently reallocate resources toward getting these tasks completed as effectively and efficiently as possible.
I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.
— Lily
What will this project look like when it's done? How do you want the client to feel, and what do you want him to know and do, after the presentation? Where will you be in your career three years from now? How would the ideal V.P. of finance do his job? What would your Web site really look like and have as capabilities if it could be the way you wanted it?
Outcome/vision can range from a simple statement of the project, such as "Finalize computer-system implementation," to a completely scripted movie depicting the future scene in all its glorious detail. Here are three basic steps for developing a vision:
1. View the project from beyond the completion date.
2. Envision "WILD SUCCESS"! (Suspend "Yeah, but. .")
3. Capture features, aspects, qualities you imagine in place.
When I get people to focus on a successful scenario of their project, they usually experience heightened enthusiasm and think of something unique and positive about it that hadn't occurred to them before. "Wouldn't it be great if. ." is not a bad way to start thinking about a situation, at least for long enough to have the option of getting an answer.
Brainstorming
Once you know what you want to have happen, and why, the "how" mechanism is brought into play.-When you identify with some picture in your mind-that is different from your current reality, you automatically start filling in the gaps, or brainstorming. Ideas begin to pop into your head in somewhat random order — little ones, big ones, not-so-good ones, good ones. This process usually goes on internally for most people about most things, and that's often sufficient. For example, you think about what you want to say to your boss as you're walking down the hall to speak to her. But there are many other instances when writing things down, or capturing them in some external way, can give a tremendous boost to productive output and thinking.
The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.
— Linus Pauling
Your mind wants to fill in the blanks between here and there, but in somewhat random order.
Capturing Your Ideas
Over the last few decades, a number of graphics-oriented brain-storming techniques have been introduced to help develop creative thinking about projects and topics. They've been called things like mind-mapping, clustering, patterning, webbing, and fish-boning. Although the authors of these various processes may portray them as being different from one another, for most of us end-users the basic premise remains the same: give yourself per-mission to capture and express any idea, and then later on figure out how it fits in and what to do with it. If nothing else (and there is plenty of "else"), this practice adds to your efficiency — when you have the idea, you grab it, which means you won't have to go "have the idea" again.
The most popular of these techniques is called mind-mapping, a name coined by Tony Buzan, a British researcher in brain functioning, to label this process of brainstorming ideas onto a graphic format. In mind-mapping, the core idea is presented in the center, with associated ideas growing out in a somewhat free-form fashion around it. For instance, if I found out that I had to move my office, I might think about computers, changing my business cards, all the connections I'd have to change, new furniture, moving the phones, purging and packing, and so on. If I captured these thoughts graphically it might start to look something like this:
You could do this kind of mind-mapping on Post-its that could be stuck on a white board, or you could input ideas into a word processor or outlining program on the computer.
Distributed Cognition
The great thing about external brainstorming is that in addition to capturing your original ideas, it can help generate many new ones that might not have occurred to you if you didn't have a mechanism to hold your thoughts and continually reflect them back to you. It's as if your mind were to say, "Look, I'm only going to give you as many ideas as you feel you can effectively use. If you're not collecting them in some trusted way, I won't give you that many. But if you're actually doing something with the ideas — even if it's just recording them for later evaluation — then here, have a bunch! And, oh wow! That reminds me of another one, and another," etc.
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
— Emile Chartier
Psychologists are beginning to label this and similar processes "distributed cognition." It's getting things out of your head and into objective, reviewable formats. But my English teacher in high school didn't have to know about the theory to give me the key: "David," he said, "you're going to college, and you're going to be writing papers. Write all your notes and quotes on separate three-by-five cards. Then, when you get ready to organize your thinking, just spread them all out on the floor, seethe structure, and figure out what you're missing." Mr. Edmund son was teaching me a major piece of the natural planning model!
Only he who handles his ideas lightly is waster of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.
— Lin Yutang
Few people can hold their focus on a topic for more than a couple of minutes, without some objective structure and tool or trigger to help them. Pick a big project you have going right now and just try to think of nothing else for more than sixty seconds. This is pretty hard to do unless you have a pen and paper in hand and use those "cognitive artifacts" as the anchor for your ideas. Then you can stay with it for hours.That's why good thinking can happen while you're working on a computer document about a project, mind-mapping it on a legal pad of on a paper tablecloth in a hip restaurant, or just having a meeting about it with other people in a room that allows you to hold the context (a white board with nice wet markers really helps there, too).
Brainstorming Keys
Many techniques can be used to facilitate brainstorming and out-of-the-box thinking. The basics principles, however, can be summed up as follows:
• Don't judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize.
• Go for quantity, not quality.
• Put analysis and organization in the background.
Don't Judge, Challenge, Evaluate, or Criticize It's easy for the unnatural planning model to rear its ugly head in brainstorming, making people jump to premature evaluations and critiques of ideas. If you care even slightly about what a critic thinks, you'll censure your expressive process as you look for the "right" thing to say. There's a very subtle distinction between keeping brainstorming on target with the topic and stifling the creative process. It's also important that brainstorming be put into the overall context of the planning process, because if you think you're doing it just for its own sake, it can seem trite and inappropriately off course. If you can understand it instead as something you're doing right now, for a certain period, before you move toward a resolution at the end, you'll feel more comfortable giving this part of the process its due.