This year I have been working on creating more ideas and letting them attempt to get from brain to paper to practice. I believe that I can come up with great ideas, but that not very many of my ideas are great. I want to come up with great ideas, so the easy solution is to practice and come up with more ideas. Let’s say that of my ideas 0.001% are great. If I were to come up with 1000 ideas, then I should have at least one great idea. The more ideas I come up with the higher the chances are that I will have a great one. Not to mention all the good ones along the way.
There is one other problem however. How will I know a great idea when I have it? Is it easy to discover if an idea is great? The solution is similar to the solution to coming up with the one idea in a thousand; try to implement more ideas.
Ideas can often be so scattered that I have found it useful to focus on idea areas. This year it has been in three areas of life. Some I have had success in, and others not so much.
Area #1: Games
I am a big fan of modern games. Games like Pandemic
This is likely be best example of my attempts to generate and test more ideas. I have thought of countless games, attempted to write the rules for ~8, and created about 5 prototypes. Of those 5, only 3 have been playable. My current playable prototype is actually starting to feel like it might be a halfway good game.
Area #2: Websites
If you are a regular reader of the blog, then you have heard about the last iteration of this idea generating area. BrowseTheRiver.com is the culmination of a stack of ideas. I learned a lot taking Browse The River from idea to paper, to more paper, to code, to code revision to more revisions, to final form. Has it received much success? Not yet, but it is an idea that was taken all the way to the completed stage. I believe it is important to see an idea come to the “published” state. There is another web/Twitter centered project that is in the works, but more on that in the future.
Area #3: Education
I am a jack of many trades and a master of none. I am also attempting to remedy this by getting some further education. My current attempt is centered around Experimental Archaeology. I have been reading what I can get my hands on regarding this topic and various concentrations inside it (like classical grain milling). Reading others ideas can help to stimulate your own. Remember that your local library can get you books for free from many far flung places for free for you through inter-library loan. I use this service to get books that I could never get my hands on otherwise to expand my knowledge of a particular subject area.
There are my current idea areas. What are yours?