Ways to Get Ideas by Mitch Ditkoff Assignment

Mitch Ditkoff’s, “14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas” tells us how to think in order to get great ideas. In this short essay, I will talk about 3 out of the 14 ways Ditkoff tells us to get ideas.

1.  Take a Break

This idea can be the most helpful and hurtful depending on the circumstances. I am a huge procrastinator. I always take breaks to avoid what needs to be done, and end up doing it right before it needs to be done. However, procrastination comes with stress. When I have a lot to be done, I don’t try to do it super-last minute. I try to give my self some time so I am not completely overwhelmed. Regardless, I am a slow worker and a perfectionist. I get overwhelmed easily and I often feel as if my brain has turned to mush. This is when I use breaks positively. Normally, I will have a snack and watch old television shows on Netflix or take a nap. By doing this, I relax and relieve the stress I put on my mind. When the show is over or my alarm goes off, I feel brand new, as in relaxed and refreshed.

2. Define the Right Challenge

Although this was the shortest of all the subsections, I feel that the idea of this is one of the most important and easiest ways to come up with a “breakthrough” idea. It makes sense right? Figure out what is wrong and fix it or make it easier. For example, I am a picky eater. When I eat pasta, I like to have the noodles, sauce and cheese not touching at first. Instead, I like to dip the noodles into the sauce and then into the cheese. Since it is pretty hard to do this on a normal plate, I was ecstatic when my mom brought home the plates with 3 separate sections. Can you say perfect? Although I know this plate like utensil wasn't specifically designed for my strange eating habits, the essence of this wonderful product begun with a question: How can one ensure that food will not touch? Every single object I am looking at in my room has a question behind its creation. Think of a problem you personally have. Then think of a way to fix it. This is how everything has been made.

Examples: Bag: How can I carry all of this stuff more efficiently? Book light: How can I read my book without my roommate complaining of the light? Photos: How can I remember this moment by looking at a part of it in the future?

3. Tolerate Ambiguity

This is one of the ways that I wish I could do easily. Ditkoff explains that breakthroughs are often the result of an evolutionary series of failed experiments. He also tells us that we should treat failure as a learning experience. If only it was that easy. This idea talks about absorbing and fully taking in failure. For someone like me who doesn’t do well with failure, this idea is probably the most difficult out of the 14. Although I try to think optimistically about things, failure is just not acceptable for me. One would think that when I finally do fail, I would try to fix it, but I am the kind of person that doesn’t like to be reminded of failure so I try to forget about it. Reading this subsection of this article helped me realize what I could do if I didn’t just forget about it and actually tried to learn from my failure.

Activity #4

  Nouns   Verbs   Adjectives
1. Computer-move-silently
2. Band-jumps-ferociously
3. Eye-tick-striped
4. Wall-vibrates-loudly
5. Marker-yell-perfectly
6. Chest-sing-descriptively
7. Slipper-moisturize-beautifully
8. Photo-talk-friendly
9. Homework-times-purple

10. Lion-nibble-softly