Your One-Brick Castle Isn't Impressive
Why Creativity Needs More Than a Single Idea
How spectacular would a Lego castle made with one brick be? Not very, right? What makes you think your article hanging on the coattails of a single idea is any different? Spoiler, it isn't. If you want your creativity to really shine, you're gonna have to fuel it with a bit more than than one idea.
Your article or project isn't going to survive on that one idea you miraculously remembered when you woke up in the middle of the night and scrawled it with your off-hand on an old electricity bill.
Like I mentioned in my previous article, you're not gonna be inventing any wheels or sliced bread—it's all about iterating on what's previously been. The biggest breakthroughs you can think of are cleverly disguised (and marketed) iterations—even the word breakthrough itself should be ubiquitously acknowledged as a misnomer. All the stuff up in your brain, all your lived experiences and more importantly your notes about them all, provide you with your own unique box of Lego (it's not "Legos"—just like it's not sheeps). You've just gotta learn how to use them all and see how all the pieces fit together. We can think of Lego blocks as metaphors for many things in creativity. They can be ideas, inspirations, experiences as well as observations.
I may not be a huge Apple fan, but Steve Jobs put it well in a speech he gave at Stanford. He said it's all about connecting the dots, specifically, "you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards"1. If you're staring at a blank page, or a single Lego block, the dots and connections aren't going to magically jump out and smack you in the face. You should be collecting all your Lego pieces over time and think about what connects them, or what doesn't connect them. See the relationships. What's *not* being said?
Where Can I Collect Lego Pieces?
That Substack Note that made you stop scrolling, even momentarily—Lego piece. The book you're reading—full of assorted Lego pieces. A conversation you had the other day, something you saw or heard. A new skill you tried and failed at. Any random observation—these are all great sources for your Lego pieces. None of these on their own are going to necessarily going to be groundbreaking, its' about building something just like with Lego. I can't tell you how many different things I've made with Lego simply by placing one brick onto another randomly and bam, a house, a new type of car or a boat or a rocket or even some weird hybrid thing that would never work in the real world.
And this is exactly what the power of connections and relationships is about. It's part doing, part experimentation and part not letting fear stop you from doing the first two.
Combining Pieces Becomes an Art
Connections and Their Power
If you practice collecting Lego pieces and putting them together in various ways, you'll get better at seeing relationships and connections between seemingly unrelated things. Take Velcro for instance. Back in 1941, George de Mestral was checking out some handsome looking burs on a burdock (not to be confused with cockleburs—easy mistake to make, I know), which is a plant whose flowers spawn out of what are essentially spiky balls. These burs have hooks on the end of the "spiky bits" that catch all manner of objects. Think all those times you were out hiking and you come back with a bunch of burs stuck to your clothes. It's great for these plants because their seeds get a free ride. George took note of these properties and combined the idea of “clothing” with burs, and Velcro was born.2
Practice, Practice, Practice!
If you want to get better at something, it's best to do purposeful practice. It's not enough to do the same thing over and over again. This became super clear to me when I changed the way I ran. For years I'd been just running in the same way—not necessarily pushing myself or doing anything other than picking a length of time or distance and running. It wasn't until I used my fitness watch, set a goal and went through their training program. My fitness exploded. I went from running 6min/km to 5-4.5min/km in a matter of weeks. It wasn't just physical, it allowed me to see the mental blocks I'd created for myself. It's the same with many things—driving every day doesn't make you a professional driver, passively reading doesn't make you an intellectual, walking daily doesn't make you an athlete.
Techniques for Combining Ideas
I don't wanna be responsible for your terrible idea generation hygeine, here are some tips to get those juices flowing. Later in the article I have some exercises you can run through.
Idea Mashups
Combine two unrelated concepts and brainstorm how they could work together.
Mind Mapping
Visually link different ideas to uncover surprising connections.
Forced Associations
Pair random items (e.g. pick words from a dictionary, or view my thread to access my random constraint generator) to spark unexpected ideas.
Start With What You've Got
Drawing a Blank
In my previous article I went over the fact that staring at a blank page is a bad idea—see it here if you're interested. The gist is that ideas don't ever spawn from a vacuum—they start from the Lego pieces you already have.
Withdraw from Your Idea Bank
I'm hoping you write stuff down. I'd be terribly worried if you didn't. Writing notes is arguably more important than the reading or the source material. Once you've noted everything down in your own words, the most useful thing about the source material is the reference. Once things are written down, you have the ability to revisit old notes, experiences, or past projects using knowledge you've gained since they were created. As people, we should grow over time, evolve our ways of thinking and become 'wiser'.
Imagine the insights you could have gained if you'd started writing notes about anything and everything from when you were 10 years old. You would be able to look back, compare and contrast how your thinking had evolved over that time.
Sometimes you'll get lucky—though ‘luck’ should not be relied upon. For example, a few weeks ago I was taking pictures with my DSLR camera and while reviewing some of the images, I noticed some weird blurred spots. Instictively I rubbed my screen, then checked my camera lens. Sure enough, the lens had dried water droplet marks, likely from snow after dropping the lens cap in the snow—it was dark. Fast forward to today and I had an idea whereby dirt or smudges on a lens could potentially be used to “fingerprint” a lens / camera. To help solidify that a particular image was taken with that exact camera in cases where it may be forensically disputed. I didn't note down any of this—why would I bother to write down that I had a smudge on my lens..? Sometimes unexpected thoughts, ideas and connections can come together in ways that you don't think about. It was just through sheer luck and because it was in recent memory that this idea managed to spark in my brain.
Build, Break, Rebuild
Iteration
One of the funnest things about Lego is that you can easily break down creations and rebuild them in so many ways, or build something completely different if you choose. Ideas can be thought of like this as well.
How many drafts do you think a Pixar movie goes through? There's no set number, however, they're iterating all the way into production—at times not reaching a first draft until after the first year!3
Your Precious is Not That Precious
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to get too ridgedly attached to an idea. Think about the sunk cost fallacy, or such metaphors as hopping off the train as soon as you realise you've passed your stop. Understand when you should abandon or reshape an idea if it's not working. Forcing Lego and Duplo pieces together won't magically make them compatible. If you need to, archive the ideas if you're unable to do anything with them right now. Think of them as reusable Lego pieces.
Exercises—Time to Get Out Your Lego
Here are some exercises to help you out. Pick one or do them all. Post your answers as a comment, restack or create a thread (let me know if you can't and I'll check the setting) in SparkLab.
Exercise 1—Idea Mashup
I mentioned this one above, now it's your turn. Pick two random things from your environment. Brainstorm how they could combine into a creative project.
Exercise 2—Build from the Past
Revisit an old idea or note. How could you expand, remix, or improve on it today?
Exercise 3—Lego Break Challenge
Take a “finished” idea and intentionally dismantle it. Explore what happens when you rearrange its parts.
Conclusion
If you only take away one thing from this article, let it be this—creativity is just building with the pieces you already have. And remember, you're not gonna build the Death Star on day 1, relax and trust the process. Start small, iterate, build, refine, rebuild, rearrange, reduce, reshape, redux—exhaust your thesaurus if you have to. Just get out there and do it! Tell us all about it.
Run through the exercises I outlined above and share your results with the class!
That’s it for now—I haven’t made time to think up a catchphrase yet, honestly I keep forgetting about it. If you have any ideas let me know and if I use it I’ll credit you with the idea!
