I’m an idea spitting machine. Ideas are rarely on shortage. I’m rich in my Ideas Bank.
I conceptualise it as an “Ideas Bank”, and I’m here to outline how you can also have one – allowing you to generate and draw ideas easier.
In most hackathons I do, the original idea often comes from me (noting that the refinement from my team always makes that idea better and more feasible than I can alone). By a quick stat: out of 24 hackathons won, 19 of those were ideas I seeded and drove forward. I have dozens of Miro whiteboards of hackathon ideas, and maintain a 36-page doc of ideas for real-world products.
Here’s the summary of concepts I propose,
The Ideas Bank
Ideas are just like how money in a bank has interest, can appreciate and depreciate, can be withdrawn and also have derivative instruments.
the “Ideas Bank”: a collection of stored ideas.
- via Brain: Can be stored informally in memory (long-term, short-term, sub-consciously, intuitively, heuristically) – tends to be less accessible, but has most ‘bank-effects’
- via Docs: Can be stored formally and recorded (e.g. a notes app, Miro, spreadsheet, notebook, in documentation…etc) – tends to be most accessible, but ‘bank-effects’ take effort to actualise
“Bank-effects on Ideas”:
- interest: ideas grow in depth, complexity, and number as time goes by
- appreciation: some ideas become more feasible/relevant/useful as the environment changes
- depreciation: some ideas become less feasible/outdated/‘done already’ as the environment changes
- withdrawal: ideas and/or parts can be taken out of the Ideas Bank at any point
- derivatives: any idea and/or parts can be combined and derived into a new idea
“Time-value of Ideas”: an idea today is worth more than an idea in the future – in the sense of the intuition gained and opportunity cost of it (not the idea’s feasibility)
Personally, my Ideas Bank is both informal (my brain) and formal (my ideas doc + Miro whiteboards). I can access either whenever I need to come up with a new idea.
Inspiration is fleeting – so record it
My informal Ideas Bank (brain) spit ideas out randomly throughout my week, and I proceed to note it down somewhere. I’ll transfer it to my ideas doc at some point, it might add a new idea entirely or augment an old existing idea. Often the more dynamic the environment, the more ideas I generate. This is like making money and putting it into the bank.
Then, when the time comes when I want to build a new product or have an idea – I first try to withdraw from my informal Ideas Bank (brain) and if I want further derivation – I can access my formal Ideas Bank (docs).
As appreciation/depreciation effects kick-in over time, it influences what ideas I withdraw to improve the feasibility and relevancy.
Important to note that the sub-conscious intuition gained from this practice is an ‘Ideas Bank’ itself.
With this approach, I’m never idea-poor and can come up with pretty good ideas in general. As I’m never trying to afford an idea-payment from just my wallet at the moment, but withdraw from my life-time of banked ideas 💰
Start banking those ideas!