Speaking of how to make ideas, James Webb Young’s ”How to make ideas” is a classic masterpiece (*5). The book was wrote in 1940. Young, who runs an advertising agency, was asked “You made wonderful advertisements. but how did you make them?” He observed himself and the surrounding idea man then wrote the book.
Young classified the process of idea creation into five phases. (*6)
- ❶ Collection of materials
- ❷ Processing of materials
- ❸ Abandonment of effort
- ❹ Birth of ideas
- ❺ Verification of the idea
❷ “Processing of materials” is a task of finding relationships by arranging and combining ideas. Young thought that “the idea is a new combination of existing elements.” And he argued that the ability to combine existing elements is largely dependent on the ability to find the relevance of things.
Young wrote the collected information on 3-inch by 5-inch cards (*7). If we write information on the cards, we can simulate the combination by put them close. This concept is similar to the KJ method described in (5.2.3) Make related things close.
Young separated the phase (❶) of collecting materials and the phase (❷) of processing them. However, in my experience, it often happens that you get aware of the lack of information during trying to combine information. Sometimes you remind books that are likely to be related. The ❶ and ❷ phases are repeated many times. So I put ❶ and ❷ as one phase and call it ”Plowing Phase.”
Young compares data processing to chewing. If I use the metaphor, the plowing phase is a repetition of putting things into your mouth, chewing and swallowing, and putting things into your mouth again.
In the material processing phase of ❷, two things happen.
One thing is to come up with an idea. Young thought this was a partial idea. He claimed that we should record every partial idea. This concept is common in GTD and KJ method.
Another thing to happen is despair. Young said that the inside of your brain eventually goes cluttered and you feel hopeless being unable to say anything.
After processing the material until you despair, you abandon your effort of organizing information and do different things. It is ❸ Abandonment of effort. Then, an idea appears at an unexpected timing. This is ❹ Birth of ideas. I call these phase ”seedling phase.” This phase can’t be managed and can’t be promoted by efforts.
The last “❺ Verification of the idea” is a phase of refining the idea you got. Ideas hardly work effectively as they were born. It is the same to a human. A baby can not work.
So, to solve real problems, we need to repeat the verification and adjustment of various conditions. I call this “growing phase.”
Footnotes:
- (*5): James Webb Young, “A Technique for Producing Ideas” McGraw-Hill Education, 2003.
- (*6) Young did not provide the bullet list. I summarized his book and made the bullet list.
- (*7) About 76mm by 127mm.
- (*8) I introduced the words of Francis Bacon, books as “to be chewed and digested” in (4.1.1.6) Gradation between “Finding” and “Assembling”. It is a similar concept.