If you want better ideas, you have to come up with more ideas!
Here’s why this works…
First off, statistics work in your favor when you come up with lots of ideas. If you’re trying to solve a problem, and you have five ideas to choose from, you have some odds that there’s a good idea in there. If you have 500 ideas to choose from, it's a practical certainty that there are good ideas in there. There may even be some breakthrough ideas in the bunch.
Furthermore, coming up with lots of ideas is a process that accelerates. The first few ideas will be fairly predictable, but as you go, you’ll get lots of new and valuable ideas.
How do I know this?
If I ask you to think of some super powers that might be cool to have, it’s likely flying, super strength or speed, controlling minds, stopping time, or healing powers come to mind first. Of course the stuff of comic books and superhero movies is top of mind, and you need to dig deeper before you get to the novel thoughts. If you keep coming up with ideas, however, super powers like vibrating your knees to produce a WiFi signal, or the power to telepathically command home appliances might come up. You’ll begin to have a higher concentration of novel and interesting ideas as you go.
Granted, some of them will be a bit wacky : )
How to develop your idea generating skills
The first time you try to come up with 100 ideas for something you’re likely to come up blank, or spend hours scraping your way to just twenty five. Writers know this all too well when they experience writer’s block.
The first advice I can give is to suspend your judgement. Don’t worry about having good ideas, just note ideas down, especially the horrible ideas. You never know how those "horrible" ideas might transform later. Don't filter yourself. Don’t worry about quality, just focus on quantity... for now.
Second, have fun with it. Play some music. Look at artwork. Ask friends for input, but don’t judge their ideas either! Remember, don’t judge ideas yet : ) You can evaluate ideas later when you have yourself a nice big pile. So, have fun, be playful. Draw inspiration and make connections from your immediate surroundings. Ask yourself what ideas a crime detective would think of, or how your granma would try to solve the problem at hand. Allow the ideas to flow from everywhere!
Third, practice matters. Don’t expect it to be easy the first time. So many of us have a past that includes someone telling us that our painting sucked, or that we shouldn’t sing because our voice is horrendous. Creativity is so fragile at a young age, and schooling trains us to produce the right answers. In creative thinking, there are no right or wrong answer until much later in the process. At first, there are just ideas, and the more you have the stronger a creative foundation you have.
How to practice
Coming up with ideas happens all the time in our lives. Sometimes it’s not really a good idea to engage this skill. If you’re trying to decide what to have for lunch, you don’t need 500 options. That’s going to paralyze you, but if you’re the manager at a restaurant and you're developing a new menu, then a long list of options will absoultely help you develop a unique edge over the competition.
Choose when to engage this skill appropriately.
Also, if you're observing someone else coming up with ideas, or if you're just noticing great ideas already in action, that will help as well. Appreciating the creativity of others will inspire your own : )
