Minds are like bodies; they must be fed to grow and develop. Animals establish regular hunting trails that they use to seek the food that they need to live. People do the same thing.
In my twenties and living in Colorado, I’d periodically go hunting for squirrels. I had one particular area that I would go to, and I would follow an informal trail each time because I knew that that was a good place for me to find squirrels. The same was true when I’d go trout fishing along a creek. I knew the holes where the fish hung out, and I would carefully approach and fish those.
Hunting for Good Ideas
In our featured quote today, Todd Henry in the Daily Creative says, “We need to establish well-defined hunting trails that help us spark new ideas. This means having sources that we routinely check for insights, habits, and rituals that help us review our notes and make new connections, or places we go that introduce new and valuable stimuli.”
Austin Kleon, writing in his book Steal Like an Artist says, “Nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.” Everything that seems new results from connecting preexisting dots in unique ways.
Our job is to collect good ideas and good dots. The more good ideas we collect, the more opportunities we have to be inspired to create new connections.
Not all ideas will resonate with us at the time we encounter them. We each come to material with unique experiences, world views, and perspectives.
Sometimes, an idea doesn’t resonate with me at once, but later, it does and sparks my creativity. The idea didn’t change; I did.
Sources for Ideas and Inspiration
We need to develop regular sources that we visit for inspiration and ideas. We want to constantly add new dots to enable us to connect them in unique ways.
I do a lot of my hunting for ideas as a part of my morning routine. See my blog post, “How to Jump-Start Your Day by Setting Up A Morning Routine With Apps, Widgets, and Shortcuts on Your iPad.”
• I do several daily readings. I use three “daily readings” books, each with a page or a page and a half designated for each day of the year. One is the Daily Pressfield, by Steven Pressfield. Another is the Daily Creative, and the third is the Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.
• I subscribe to several blogs with the ReadWise Reader. I’ve carefully chosen which blogs I want to subscribe to. When I subscribe to a blog and discover that it doesn’t contain much value to me, I unsubscribe.
• The ReadWise service that I subscribe to allows me to save highlights from my reading to their service. Every morning, it delivers 15 of these random highlights to me. These are quotes that I’ve considered important and worthy of highlighting. I’ve often forgotten about them; a highlight often sparks a new idea for a blog topic.
• I also read books on my iPad in the Kindle app. I read both nonfiction and fiction. I carefully choose the books I will read, typically from referrals from other people I respect. As I read them, I highlight them, and then those highlights are synced into the ReadWise service, so I know I will see them again later.
• In addition, I listen to audiobooks or podcasts when I exercise. It takes my mind off the boredom of exercise and prompts new thinking. If I want to remember something, I use the Whisper Memos complication on my Apple Watch to record my comments about the idea. The app sends a memo transcription to my email, which I can process later.
Making Use of Good Ideas We Collect
So, how do we use these good ideas that we get?
I write blog posts and regularly get ideas from my “hunting trips.” I use a shortcut that helps me set up a blog post idea page in Craft. It prompts me to list a proposed title for the blog post and some comments about the post. If there’s a highlight, I’ll save the highlight in the post as well. (As I did for this post).
If I run across a highlight or a quote that I think might benefit someone else I know or that they might appreciate, I’ll send it to them. It’s also an excellent way to let them know I’m thinking about them. Perhaps it will spark them to some creative work.
Sometimes, I come across an idea that I write down. I revisit that idea during the day or comment on it in a journal post.
What Are Your Hunting Trails For Collecting Good Ideas?
What are your hunting trails for feeding your mind?
Whatever they are, let me urge you to be intentional about them. It’s easy to overdo this. Sometimes, people subscribe to everything in sight, and they’re overwhelmed by the amount of material. They wind up reading nothing and getting nothing out of it.
Tiago Forte’s advice in Building A Second Brain applies here. He writes, “We need to adopt the perspective of a curator, stepping back from the raging river and starting to make intentional decisions about what information we want to fill our minds.”
Pick your sources carefully, then devise a method for regularly reviewing this material. For me, that’s mostly during my morning routine. For you, it might be something else. Find a process that works for you.