Before 2020 Arrives Follow Easy Tips to Become an Idea Machine

Unfinished Business to Take Care of Before 2020 Starts

What unfinished business do you have to take care of before the New Year starts? I abandoned Become an Idea Machine by Claudia Altucher a couple of years ago, and I need to start reading it again.

Become an Idea Machine: Generating Ideas on Steroids

In 2016, I purchased Become An Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are The Currency Of The 21st Century by Claudia Azula Altucher.  I had high hopes for the book. When I bought the book, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t a book you read in one sitting. Instead, you do an exercise every day for six months. That was a bit of a turn off for me and it took awhile for me to start reading it.

I started doing the exercises in 2017. And I also told a friend about Become an Idea Machine, so she bought a copy to do the exercises with her husband. Day 58 was the last day I did any of the exercises. To complete the book and all the exercises takes 180 days. For some people, that would seem like forever to them. The issue for me was that I thought some of the exercises were irrelevant and didn’t want to do them. I forced myself to do some.

Why I Bought Become an Idea Machine & Stumbling Block to Finish It

I bought Become an Idea Machine mainly because James Altucher said forcing himself to write 10 ideas a day helped him to achieve success, and even recover from a setback. But when you follow the process in the book, Altucher’s ex-wife, Claudia, gives you prompts every day. I’m not a girl who likes prompts, but having structure is not necessarily a bad thing. The prompts are straightforward. Some people may love them, but I didn't like a few of them.

These are the prompts that I really loved:

1. List 10 Apps That You’d Like To Use.
2. 10 Coursera courses you would like to take, and what would they have in their curriculum.
3. Tell Me Your Favorite 10 Books Of All Time And One Thing You Learned From Each.
4. List 10 ways you could generate passive income within the next 3 months and the 2nd step that would have to happen for any of them to move ahead.

I loved the above prompts because when you take the time to work on them, you have great ideas for creating something new. And I appreciated that a lot.

These are the prompts that I really hated:

1. 10 new yoga poses you can create, i.e.: use animal names, and describe alignment, purpose & effects.
2. Come up with 10 new recipes.
3. Pretend you are an expert and argue 5 reasons why aromatherapy is real and it works, and 5 reasons why it is a scam.

The above prompts I have absolutely no interest in. And there were more yet to come that I couldn’t see myself getting excited about. So I abandoned Become an Idea Machine. However, recently, I had lunch with the same friend who I told about Become an Idea Machine. It turns out that she and her husband completed the 180 days.

Sometimes Success Would Have Happened If You Hadn’t Given Up

She told me that for a long time, after working on the 10 ideas every day, nothing happened, until one day, the ideas started to flow. When she asked my experience, I sheepishly told her that I never finished all the exercises. I committed right then and there to start the process again.

My friend followed-up to see if I did what I said I was going to do. I was able to tell her that I started over since I have changed and my answers to the prompts would be very different. The prompts I listed above that I hated, I dread having to work on them. Should I substitute those prompts with others that I would likely work on? Or should I stick with the prompts that the author recommends?

Motivation to Read and Finish Become an Idea Machine

A big motivator for me to complete all the exercises is that I want to hone my creativity skills. And I believe that consistently working on generating ideas will help. Creativity and related skills such as ideation, innovation, problem solving, and so on, are among the skills you need to thrive in the future.

Have you read?

Summary Technique for Producing Ideas

The MacGyver Secret by Lee David Zlotoff, a Summary

Summary: How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen, Summary

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

Books to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Become an Idea Machine complements the books I’ve been featuring here. I think it would be worthwhile to develop the habit of generating ideas every day. By consistently generating 10 ideas each day, it’s likely that you’ll find a few that you can monetize. You’ve heard the phrase, “Ideas are a dime a dozen.” That’s not the case in this instance.

The first few ideas you’ll come up with quickly, but they tend to be nonsense ideas. It becomes a struggle to keep going, but pushing through your resistance is where you’ll find gold. As I write this blog post, I’m reminded to re-read my notes on Do the Work by Steven Pressfield to remind myself of how to push through resistance.

So far, you’ve learned about the models in A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young and How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster. Jack Fosters builds on the work of James Webb Young. And he does it in a special way. Foster added a section for the reader to prepare her mind before she starts to produce ideas. In The MacGyver Secret, you learn to rely more on your subconscious mind. Finally, The Idea Hunter introduces you to a process to create an idea-intensive environment.

In Become an Idea Machine, you develop the habit of coming up with 10 ideas each day. If you spent the time to combine all the five techniques, what might you end up with?

Compare and Contrast Creativity Models

Taki Moore Four Forces

Working on some of the prompts in Become an Idea Machine will be a barrier for me. I’ve scanned the prompts for the 180 days. I noticed that they are a few that I’ll unlikely work on. To prevent myself from abandoning the book once more, I came up with a solution that I can live with. And I’m sure that you can live with it as well. When using the Four Forces, your focus is on Frustration, Wants, Fear, and Aspiration.

When you name these things, you can generate appropriate ideas, even if you’re a woman business owner, or a woman millennial. That’s the beauty of the Four Forces. So instead of working on some random prompt, you work on ideas that will help you now.

Using Taki Moore’s Four Forces to Generate Ideas

You are motivated to move away from your Frustrations and Fears and motivated to move toward your Wants and Aspirations. Your Frustrations and Wants are Immediate, while Your Fears and Aspirations are Imagined.

Generate ideas to address your Frustrations and Fears. What ideas can you come up with to make your wants and aspirations a reality?

 The MacGyver Secret How to Get Ideas A technique for producing ideas The Idea Hunter

Note: If you click on a link and make a purchase on Amazon, the organization will pay me a small commission!