3 Ways to create killer ideas

Maybe you have a creative mind and can generate ideas regularly. But what if your NFL team just finished the season 0-17? You might not feel up to creating innovative ideas.

Or maybe your doctor just told you it’s time to give up your addiction to Real Housewives of Winnipeg — your binge watching is making you lose sleep and do poorly at work.

In that case, try one of the three techniques to create killer ideas.

Meet New People

It’s natural to want to hang around people you know. It’s comfortable. To create new ideas, it helps to get out of that habit and meet new people.

Try stopping people on the street and asking how their day is going and would they like to get some coffee. Here is how it worked for me just last week:

• A 64-year-old lady bowler told me to get lost.
• A 22-year-old actress/model moved against the building and shielded her eyes.
• A 35-year-old lawyer held up a can of mace and said she was going to call the police.
• A 52-year-old ballet dance company administrator walked faster and kept staring at the ground.

Change Your Surroundings

Do you sit in the same chair at the same desk every day? Come on — get up and change your surroundings. It will be just the creative spark you need! Try:

• Seeing a new city by hitching a ride, sitting in the back of a tractor-trailer on a stack of leather hand bags.
• Camping for two weeks In Yosemite with nothing but a knife, a blanket and a giant box of unopened Q-Tip packages.
• Traveling to Europe to see long lost relatives, walking up to old ladies in Italy saying “Grandma?”

Experience New Things

The reason you can’t come with tons of new ideas is you experience the same boring day week after week. Instead of the same old routine, go out and experience new things such as:

• Go to your local art museum, stand in front of paintings and say loudly, “Yo, we be wilding out here!”
• Attend an adult-education class examining the rise and fall of the San Diego, ahem, Los Angeles Chargers, shaking your head a lot and crying intermittently.
• Take guitar lessons, complaining every few minutes that “It hurts my fingers!”

To come up with new ideas, your brain needs fresh inputs that help it create new connections, thoughts and concepts. Try these methods and you’ll be an idea-generating machine.