Why your best ideas come after your worst

"This article very nearly didn't exist. For several weeks, it made a conspicuous effort not to. It began, or rather did not begin, when I was invited to pitch a second article for Big Think about virtually any topic in neuroscience. Triumph. I had freedom and unlimited time. What could be easier? A lot, it turns out. Weeks went by, and I did not write. My inbox began to fill with cheerful nudges from Stephen, my editor. Still keen to write something?"

"The first time around had been cleaner. I'd been assigned a slot in Big Think's consciousness issue on a tight deadline. That forced me to write about the neuroscience behind sleep, a relevant topic I knew well enough to write cold. There was no dithering, just a window of opportunity narrowing by the minute. This time, the window was wide open. My brain was free to go anywhere, and so, of course, it went nowhere."

"I emailed Stephen with a counterproposal: Would he mind reducing the scope of "anything"? He sent over a handful of ideas, one of which centered on a strategy to spark creativity, coined by Scott Dikkers, founder of The Onion. "The Clown and the Editor?" I had no idea what it meant, but it had a nice ring. I opened a blank document titled Clownnotes_1 and resumed not-writing with renewed discipline."

An open, unlimited brief produced prolonged procrastination and scattered research. Tight deadlines previously induced focused writing about sleep and yielded a completed piece. Narrowing the scope through editor suggestions redirected attention toward Scott Dikkers' Clown-and-Editor strategy. Generating many partial drafts and discarding most iterations served as part of the exploratory process. Proposing to submit an intentionally bad draft created permission to produce material. The Clown functions as a rapid, playful idea generator. The Editor functions as a critical, selective refiner. Alternating or separating these roles helps transform chaotic ideation into usable creative work.

Read at Big Think