A new day

I'm going to try an experiment today. I've been feeling lately like my ideas have been stuck on a track. I haven't had an earth shaterring idea in a while (like Make Out Porn or the Scrabble Tile Necklace). You know, one I could get really excited about. That's part of the reason I'm really happy about having new voices on board. It can only help the overall quality of the site.

But also, moments like this are kind of why I wanted to start this in the first place. When you challenge yourself to come up with new ideas, what happens when you can't? It's not enough to just come up with filler (which we're guilty of from time to time). How do you get past the tough times and start innovating?

Ideas are kind of important. They're new experiences, and solutions to old problems, and entertainment, and ways to make money (or lose it).

So, this brings me to my experiment: I'm stuck. How do I get unstuck? I'm going to switch genres. All our ideas seem to fall into a variety of categories (inventions, new ways to look at the world, ideas for books/ movies/ music, etc.) and I've found myself stuck in the sort of half-assed invention world. So I'm stepping out of that genre and I've decided to try and come up with a new way to look at the world. Here goes (longest preamble ever!):

I'm borrowing this from Zappos.com. Sort of. They're one of the few companies I know who looks at why they've fired people and uses that to determine what's really important to them. Not what they say is important to them, but the things they're actively using to make decisions. Did we fire this person because they were bad at customer service (which we say we care about)even though they brought in money? Or because they negatively affected the bottom line but were kick-ass awesome at taking care of customers? The answer would tell you a lot.

So, I propose we do this, but with our friends. Take a look at who you've "fired" as a friend. Now, people drift apart and that might skew your results here. But anyone you've actively decided not to be friends with anymore; look at them. Why did you make that choice? I've only done it a handful of times but I can tell you some things I know matter to me. I'm not that into drugs, soul-crushing negativity gets to me after a while, and one more big one: I don't want to work that hard at being friends. Now, I'm totally willing to put in effort, don't get me wrong. But if I'm doing all the work, and circumstance doesn't cause us to interact, and even if we were super close at one point, I'm just going to do it.

I didn't really know that about myself.

Maybe you won't have an ah-ha moment and maybe you will but the exercise is worth it either way. Even if you just reinforce what you already know.

(Also, this was totally helpful. Seriously. I think the slump might be over. At least for three more posts!)