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The Double Down Strategy for New Ideas

A counter-intuitive strategy for brainstorming ideas

Wang Yip
3 min readNov 24, 2020
Photo by Dstudio Bcn on Unsplash

James Altucher swears his life changes every six months from one single practice. That practice? Writing down 10 ideas every day.

What kind of ideas? Business ideas? Book ideas? Money ideas? Yes. All of the above. The important thing is not to worry about what kind of ideas. The point is to get into the habit of generating ideas and practicing your idea muscle. Your brain is just like any other muscle — the more you work out by generating ideas, the more your brain grows.

Ever tried to write down 10 ideas before? Go ahead, I’ll wait here as you try it now. Think of ten ideas to improve your business. Or think of ten ways to be a better employee. Or ten movie ideas you would pay to watch. You can get to five ideas fairly quickly. But when you get to the seven idea, you start to sweat a little. Why is it so hard to come up with ideas? By the eight idea, you are really ‘sweating’, trying to get to that last repetition of the idea workout. And when you finally get the tenth idea, you might be exhausted.

But I found there’s a counterintuitive way of getting to ten ideas quickly — one that doesn’t cost you any additional time, money, or effort.

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Wang Yip
Wang Yip

Written by Wang Yip

Author of Essential Habits. I write about personal development, work and managing your career. Connect with me at www.wangyip.ca

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