Solitude and conversations lead to great ideas
There was a tweet recently by Sahil Lavingia that stated
“Great ideas come from two places: solitude and conversation.”
I have certainly found this to be the case.
When I was commuting into London every day I would regularly spend 30 minutes walking back from the train station. During this time I would either listen to podcasts - all sorts of subjects - or just use the time to think. This led to a whole bunch of ideas around work or potential projects or just interesting avenues to follow. I would regularly have to stop and jot down some idea before I forgot it.
On the other side of the coin, a lot of great ideas have come when discussing them with others. I am fortunate to work with a couple of colleagues who I am able to brainstorm ideas with and these have always been fun and productive sessions.
My father has a technical background and spent a lot of time inventing things for other people. He definitely has a different way of thinking about problems compared to most people I know. He has a knack of simplifying something to the core and then looking at it in a different way or from a different angle.
This means I regularly have sessions where we just talk about things or work through ideas and these are brilliant fun and I always learn something new.
I definitely think you should make time just to think or to have “idea conversations” with others.
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