Do An Idea Quota

We all have a tendency to prematurely declare a problem solved. It’s called the Einstellung Effect. Established by Abraham Luchins back in 1942, validated by Karl Dunker and more recently Oxford researchers, the Einstellung Effect describes our fixation upon the first plausible-sounding solution to a problem.

The problem is, there’s no correlation between an idea’s quality and how early it arrives. In fact, expecting good ideas to keep coming is a far valuable productive assumption.

One simple but effective way to short circuit the pernicious Einstellung Effect is to set what we call an “idea quota,” a somewhat-arbitrary quantity target that forces you to keep going, even after you think you've gotten the right answer. Thomas Edison famously set himself an idea quota of one minor invention every ten days, and one major invention every six months. But his was more of an output goal (better than nothing, but not exactly what I mean). Instead, I'm referring to a quantity quota in the idea generation phase.

As Edward de Bono says in Lateral Thinking, “The advantage of having a predetermined quota is that one goes on generating alternatives until one has filled the quota and this means that if a particularly promising alternative occurs early in the search, one acknowledges it and moves on instead of being captured by it. A further advantage of the quota is that one has to make an effort to find or generate alternatives instead of simply awaiting the natural alternatives.”

Celebrated choreographer Twyla Tharp describes her experience imposing a quota on students in The Creative Habit:

"I conduct an exercise when I lecture at colleges. I'll go backstage and come back with a found object. The last time I did this I returned with a wooden stool. Then I gave the audience a challenge: You've got two minutes to come up with sixty uses for the stool.

A lot of interesting things happen when you set an aggressive quota, even with ideas. People's competitive juices are stirred. Instead of panicking they focus, and with that comes an increased fluency and agility of mind.

People are also forced to suspend critical thinking. To meet the quota, they put their internal critic on hold and let everything out. They're no longer choking off good impulses.

The most interesting thing I've noticed is that there's a consistent order to the quality of ideas. You'd think the sixtieth idea would be the most lame, but for my purposes, which are to trigger leaps of imagination, it's often the opposite. To meet the quota, people begin by listing the most obvious uses for a stool, such as sitting on it, standing on it, or burning it as fuel. These are the least original ideas. After that come the more imaginative uses -- a doorstop, an anchor, a weapon, a projectile in a riot, as raw material for a sculpture, as a surface to drum on. Then the final ideas come straggling in -- as a surface for gymnastics, as a tool for taming lions, as a dancing partner. The closer they get to the sixtieth idea, the more imaginative they become -- because they have been forced to stretch their thinking. It's the same arc every time: the first third of the ideas are obvious; the second third are more interesting; the final third show flair, insight, curiosity, even complexity, as later thinking builds on earlier thinking.”

What if you believe me? What if you say, “Jeremy, I’d like to give it a try”?

Then I’d say, “Great. Have at it! Set a goal for yourself — say 10 ideas minimum— and generate options rather than fixating on the first thing that comes to mind. And if you need a little help, try the chatbot I made for myself, here.”

Related: Don’t Abandon Divergent Thinking
Related: Hack Your Creative Block
Related: Expect Good Ideas to Come Late
Related: Try Ten™ Community

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