Why It's Good to Have Bad Ideas

While conducting a workshop on creativity, I gave each of several small groups a small box of paper clips. I invited each group to record as many different uses for a paper clip as they could in five minutes. Here are some of the 57 ideas they generated:

• Game spinner
• Cheap nose ring
• Make metal letters
• Christmas ornament holder
• Ear cleaner
• Lock picking device
• Mini fishing rod
• Bookmark
• Tongue scratcher
• Ant javelin
• Musical instrument
• Zipper pull (on a jacket)
• Earrings
• Tiny flagpole; tiny flag
• Cheese cube holder
• Tie clip

It was clear that these groups were able to generate multiple responses. It was also apparent that the quality of those responses was all over the map. They were certainly divergent and clearly inventive. The participants also demonstrated a willingness to take some risks and pursue both conventional and unconventional options. Their creativity was in full swing!

The participants? Third-grade students.

We often have this belief that when faced with a creative challenge, we need to generate a really good idea that will save the day (or ensure our continued employment). As a result, we focus on “the perfect idea” or “the best solution.”

That thinking perhaps does more to curtail creativity than anything else. While it may be a common focal point for a professional project, it significantly narrows our vision and sublimates our creative fires. We are bent on conjuring a single “really good idea” without the necessity of generating lots of lousy ones along the way.

Yet producing unworkable, impractical, worthless, and sophomoric ideas is a necessary and essential part of the creative process. Everything is considered; nothing is presumed.

Source: mailrahulbhattacharya/Pixabay

Give Yourself Permission

One of the classic books for writers, one that goes against the grain of what most writing instruction books do, is the incomparable Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg. Her admonitions for the creative life are to subtract rules, rather than to add more rules to an already burdened process.

One of the finest pieces of advice in the book is for writers (and, by extension, anyone trying to generate creative thoughts) to give themselves permission to create crappy ideas. In short, creativity is not a search for perfection, but rather the generation of all sorts of possibilities without pre-judgment or preconceived notions about their quality.

One of the challenges writers of every stripe face is to get ideas out of their heads and onto a computer screen. Will all those ideas be perfect or fit for publication? Absolutely not! Undoubtedly, there will be imperfect ideas, disconnected ideas, ridiculous ideas, bland ideas, and (of course) crappy ideas.

The ultimate task, unrelated to the generation of those ideas is, through a long series of revisions and edits, to create something both readable and enjoyable. A lot of the initial ideas will be set aside or discarded.

Bottom line: Accomplished writers (and thinkers) generate multiple ideas without giving thought to the “goodness” of those initial considerations. Prejudging the worthiness of ideas ultimately subverts the creative process.

Or, as Natalie Goldberg states in her subsequent book Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life, “Play around. Dive into absurdity. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.”

The Production of Ideas

Being creative is independent of coming up with the solution to a mental challenge or personal conflict. Creativity is based on the notion of generating multiple ideas—ideas without any restrictions, definitions, or limitations. When we presume the quality of an idea, we curb its effectiveness. When we pre-assess thoughts in advance of putting them into action, we diminish their worth or ultimate utility.

The implications are staggering. Insight and logic support the notion that a sustained focus on producing only “good” or “perfect” ideas forces us into a “don’t take any risks” mindset. Consumed with looking for the “best” ideas conditions us not to take any chances; it significantly reduces our creative spirit.

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The solution when faced with a creative challenge: Generate a plethora of ideas without regard to their appropriateness or usefulness. Some of those ideas will be possibilities and some will be useless (e.g. paper clip = ear cleaner). That’s OK. Ultimately, know this: Generating crappy ideas is an integral part of the creative process! It’s your brain with its “pedal to the metal.”

Or, consider this quote from Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize winner: “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.”