Do people who don't know how to (deliberately) think of ideas exist? (lemm.ee)

submitted 6 days ago by IJustWentPsycho@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I sometimes feel like I don't know how to deliberately come up with ideas at all, but I'm not sure if I'm actually like that (it's probably just insecurity or something, lol).

Do people like that actually exist, though? If so, why are they like that? And how do they learn to deliberately think of ideas?

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[-] zxqwas@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

Not sure if that is a thing. From what I've been taught:

When you concentrate on something your brain will tend to use familiar thought patterns and not be creative.

When you relax and un-focus you get more creative.

So in a way you can't try to deliberately come up with ideas. The way around it is to focus on something you want ideas about for a few hours, then get up and do something mindless, have a walk or a bath or something.

[-] Sasha 2 points 6 days ago

I think you've hit the nail on the head. I've been trying to learn to write lyrics for the last year or so, and the one thing I know for sure about creativity is that it's not a switch.

Ideas come to me walking down the street and I have to jot them down for later. If I want to come up with something new on the spot, I just start singing without thinking about it and usually something good eventually falls out of my mouth.

Zack Freedman has a great video on training yourself to be creative: https://youtu.be/6r8-o2WpoCA

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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025

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