"How to have brilliant ideas"

HOW TO HAVE BRILLIANT IDEAS ... Did you ever asked yourself the question, "How many brilliant ideas have I had lately? When was the last time I had a really brilliant idea? What is the most brilliant idea I have ever come up with?" I'm sure you ask yourself these questions all the time, right? I'm serious here! Don't I look serious? OK, Here's what we're going to do ... Pop up and editor and create a file called BRILL.IDA, (for those of you who are reading this on paper, get a pen and turn over the last page and write on the back "BRILLIANT IDEAS".) Now, in the upper left hand corner put the number "1. " Then type in (write down) the most brilliant idea you ever had in your life. Now, skip a line and put a "2. " down and type in the second most brilliant idea you've ever had. Continue this process and list the 10 most brilliant ideas you ever had in your life. Now, scroll down the screen a few lines (move down the page a few lines) and write down what you did to bring these ideas out into the real world. Did you try the idea? Did you sell the idea? Did you give the idea away? Did you write down the idea? Did you tell anyone about the idea? Did the idea benefit you in any way? Interesting exercise isn't it? I feel like I come up with ideas all the time. My problem is bringing them into reality. I find that it really isn't that hard to come up with brilliant ideas once you get your mind in a brilliant ideas mode. It's very similar to learning how to tell jokes. For those of you who are good at telling jokes, you know that there's more to a joke than just telling it. My wife is really struggling to learn how to tell jokes. She's standing with a group of people and she tells a pretty good joke, nobody laughs. I say, "wait a minute", I repeat the same joke, after they have heard my wife tell it, and it's hilarious! She hates me for that. Steve Martin once said on Saturday Night Live, "People come up to me all the time and say, 'Steve, what makes you so damn funny?' And I tell them, 'When I get up in the morning, I put a piece of baloney in each shoe. And when I stand up, I feel funny!'". It's a state of mind. You can't just say something funny, you have to BE funny. Now, for those of you who haven't quite got the concept on how to BE funny, I'm here to tell you that Steve Martins technique actually works! No kidding! If you go to the refrigerator in the morning and get some baloney and put a slice in each shoe, you will become funny. You can start out gradually. Just do it on Saturdays, when you're not at work, and you're not in Church. And don't fool around with that low fat Turkey baloney, we're talking pork here! Slowly you work your way up to 2 to three times a week. After you gain some confidence in what you're doing, tell your friends about it and share with them what you're going through. This not only builds self confidence but by that time you are ready to start talking about it the magic will have already begun to take effect and people will begin to realize that there is something funny about you. Before long, people will be laughing as soon as you walk into the room. When this happens, you won't even need to use the baloney anymore. Having brilliant ideas is the same sort of thing. You have to get yourself in a brilliant frame of mind. A brilliant idea frame of mind is kind of like the way you feel during a "Flying Dream" and it is developed, like anything else, from practice. You need to want to be brilliant and to practice having brilliant ideas on a regular basis. You start out by having good ideas and you work your way up. Brilliant idea example ... Here's an example of how a brilliant idea is formed on a step by step basis. About three weeks ago I was sitting on a plane on the runway in Denver on my way back from a week long software developers conference in Salt Lake City. The plane was taxying out to the runway and the flight crew was giving instructions about what to do in case the plane crashes. Over the last year or so I started noticing a new instruction dealing with the kind of people they would like to have sitting next to emergency exit doors. The idea is that if the person next to the exit door doesn't have it together enough to open the exit door and help people evacuate the plane, that the odds of survival drop off some. The flight crew suggests that if someone feels that they can't deal with exit doors they would be happy to re-seat these people. Not once have I seen anyone move. So what have we here? We have a problem. Brilliant ideas come as a result of solving a problem. No problems, no brilliant ideas. So therefore, the first thing to realize about wanting to have brilliant ideas is that problems are our friend.
So there I am and I'm realizing that a problem exists. The question arises in my mind, "How are we going to get the best and most well trained people to sit by exit doors on airplanes?" At this point I have: 1) Realized that a problem exists. 2) Identified the problem. 3) Posed the key question. To solve this problem of having qualified people sit next to exit doors, we first need for there to be a method of identifying the type of people who we would want to sit by exit doors. There needs to be a reliable method for classifying individuals who are the exit door type of people. The method needs to be so simple that ordinary airport personnel can look at an individual and quickly tell, with a good degree of accuracy, if a person is or is not exit door material. Well, the easiest way for airport personnel to identify a person as being exit door material would be if they carried some kind of ID card and was in a computer database of prime exit door people. But how do we go about creating this database and passing out these cards? How are we going to separate and identify emergency exit door people? Well we could train people in evacuation procedures and after they go through the training course and pass it they get an ID card and a pin. Their names go into a computer database and when they book a flight the computer automatically assigns them a seat number next to an exit door. So where's this training going to come from? Who going to pay for it? Why would someone want to take this course? These are questions you have to ask yourself in forming the brilliant idea. People want to know, "Yea but how ya gonna make it work?". They could do training once a year at some designated airport where the weather was nice. The class would be sponsored by the commercial airlines, insurance companies, and the military. Perhaps people would also pay a fee to attend. The training would be 5 days long where hands on emergency evacuation techniques are practiced. The evenings would be free for speakers who are nationally known airline safety experts and for parties and socializing. Besides training, it would be like a club or a social event. So why would someone want to go through this kind of training? Well there's several reasons. First of all, ego. You've got a pin making you a certified hero. Something to be proud of, brag about. To help one feel ike their life has meaning. To feel safer about flying. Such and event would be a good place to meet people if you are single. To advance one's career. And perhaps to get discounts on air fairs and seating on overbooked flights. Airlines could compete with discounts offered to Evac people so as to attract more of them to their airline so that they can say they are safer than their competitor. And if these discounts are substantial, then people who fly often are going to take the course just to get the discounts. So why would the airlines want to do it? To have less people die. People dieing is not only unpleasant, but it's bad for business. First of all you lose customers. Dead people don't fly on airplanes very often. Their lawyers want to make sure the family is well compensated for their loss. A dead person is usually worth a million bucks at least. It's bad advertising when a crash occurs. But it's good advertising when the public knows that there are trained Evac people on board. The Evac people are running around wearing their little pins or photo badges creating the air of confidence and security. It creates the same kind of feeling that Boy Scouts helping little old ladies across the street creates. The airlines advertise how proud they are to be a sponsor of the safety training to help make sure the plane doesn't crash and burn with you having to trample some old lady to get to the exit door. The insurance companies benefit because the less people who die, the less they have to pay. Safety is something that insurance companies tend to invest in especially if it can be shown that it will save them money. The military will be interested in it because it gives them something to do that's useful now that the cold war is over. Since we taxpayers have spent billions educating these guys to fly planes perhaps we can put some of that training to good use. This way we can start recycling the military. By creating this environment of safety, the airlines can grow the market. There are people out there that drive because they have never flown in one of those "damn things". People say that they are afraid of flying. I'm just the opposite myself. As long as the plane is flying I have no problems. It's when the plane stops flying that scares me. So here I am putting together these ideas and all these little ideas start fitting together to make this brilliant idea. I realized that this idea would actually work. So where are we at now in the development of the brilliant idea? 4) We divide the problem into small parts. We then start solving each of these small parts. We come up with little solutions to little problems. 5) We interrelate the solutions into a system of solutions based on obtaining an overall goal. Generally, if the goal is sound and makes sense, the pieces to the puzzle tend to fit together. It is important to keep focused that the goal is to come up with the key answer to the key question and solve the problem. 6) We see that a brilliant idea is made up of a collection of ordinary ideas organized as a system linked by a unifying goal which is to solve a problem that one has identified. Now that we have come up with the brilliant idea the question now becomes, how do I get it out into reality? How do I make it actually happen. Well, I might get lucky. Someone in the right position to make it happen may read this article and implement it. I can't do it myself so what I want to do is to get this idea into the hands of the right people. I have at least written it down on a computer. I can print it out and mail it. I can fax it. Or I can send it by electronic mail to the right person. I'm still trying to find the right person. But it does bring me face to face with the last step: 7) Bring the idea into reality. Make the idea actually happen. Besides just learning the techniques for having brilliant ideas, many people have to deal with obstacles to brilliant ideas. Many of these obstacles have to do with confidence in yourself not only to create the brilliant idea, but to express it. You might ask yourself, "Am I smart enough to come up with a brilliant idea?". The answer to that is, yes you are. Any time you see a situation where you say to yourself, "Isn't that stupid!", you are in a situation where you have the opportunity to say something about it. What you have to do is cross that line into attempting to take action. Action might be as simple as writing a letter. "Dear Sirs, You could save a lot of money on your utility bill if you didn't run you heating and air conditioning at the same time and closed your windows in the winter." You have to get past the idea of "fear of rejection". You will be rejected, so what!? Some people don't want to hear the obvious. But you make up for it when someone says, "That makes sense. I never thought ofteacher who had trouble making a flaky TV set work so that we could