One morning late last year I listened to a chap on the radio, talk about how to become an Ideas Machine.

What a wonderful thought!

He explained that if you simply wrote down ten ideas a day, even for just one month, at the end of the month you would have 300 ideas, after a year 3650 ideas! This is not to say that they would necessarily all be good ideas, but nevertheless, a lot of ideas. The important thing is do it daily, the practice of making daily lists, exercises the brain, and as with most exercises the more you practice, the better and stronger you get.

Inspired, I decided that I would become an Ideas Machine, for a few days at least. Initially I had high and mighty plans that I was going to write lists and lists of marvellous ideas that would change the world, my life, or the life of someone else. I would be equipped for any occasion to impress friends and colleagues with my amazing ideas for any given topic. Which may have been the case if I happened to be in a board meeting where the directors wanted to discuss ideas for what to have for dinner , that take less than 15 minutes, or ideas of places to take their mum on Mother’s Day.
The reality was or still is, that my ideas have included a whole range of thoughts, here are a few, actually ten…

1. Names for the dog I do not have
2. Healthy portable snacks to make for weekend cycling
3. On-line companies I could start
4. Things to do on Boxing Day
5. Things to do to improve my knowledge of the digital world
6. Calligraphy projects
7. Day courses that would be fun to take
8. Strap-lines using the word colour ( this one was for a work project)
9. Ideas for my friend, to turn her love of photography into a career- I like giving away ideas
10. Ideas for further ideas!

Some ideas lead to further ideas, for example when I wrote down ideas for an on-line business, there was one idea, that I thought had potential, so I then wrote down ten possible names for the business. I’ve kept very few of the lists, as its been more about the discipline of starting the day exercising my brain that I’ve found rewarding, however there are a few exceptions, I jotted down ‘start a blog’ on list number 5. above, and here I am…I now regularly write down ideas for blog posts.

ps. I did not recall the name of the chap on the radio, so I’ve now done some research on-line and believe it was James Altrucher, visit his website www.jamesaltrucher.com Thank you James, I’m now an Ideas Machine in the making.