Much smarter to build form around the substance of an idea.
Charlie Rose one time asked Bruce Springsteen, "When do you write?" His reply: "When I have an idea." As against when he doesn't have one. What a wonderful use of his time!
John Denver used to say (for you Millennials, he was RCA's second-biggest record seller after Elvis) that, "the songs come when they have a mind to." The idea for "Annie's Song," his largest hit, came to him while he was on a chair lift in the work of a day of skiing.
Springsteen & John Denver were both wise to know that you wait & watch for ideas, you don't force them in to being. Well, actually, you can listen to instances where each of them did try to force it — & got lousy songs as a result.
Steve Jobs was asked years ago about how he planned to compete with the Wintel monopoly. He said, "I'm going to wait for the next giant thing." He didn't say "I'm going to personally generate the next giant thing." Neither iTunes nor the iPod was his idea. The iTunes idea came from a small company called SoundJam MP, & the genesis of the iPod was a design inside the head of Tony Fadell, a tech consultant who went to work for Apple. Steve Jobs's brilliance was in keeping his eyes open for the ideas, recognizing the moment, connecting the dots, & "creating" iTunes & iPod as a technique that worked together, adding Jonathan Ive's designs, & promotion it all incredibly. He wasn't sitting at his table banging his head against the wall trying to force an idea out of the universe.
In fact, to the extent that you are punishing yourself for the shortage of an idea, or torturing yourself to come up with one, you may well miss the idea that is right under your nose, waiting to be acknowledged.
There's three simple rules I have learned about ideation: Look & wait.
Look. For years my company struggled to come up with the right slogan for our AIDS Rides. "Challenge yourself & you will grow." Yuck. "The adventure of a lifetime." Yawn. The more frustrated they got, the more the answer eluded us. Then one day they said to ourselves, "These events are impossible. You require to ride for grueling distances. You require to sleep in a tent & raise immense amounts of funds from your friends. Most people look at them & think, 'Impossible.'" Having admitted the truth, they stared at that word "impossible" for about an hour. & they noticed three words inside there. "I'm" & "possible." "I'mpossible." Our new slogan. It had been staring us in the face for six years. They weren't looking.
& as for waiting...This is tragic but instructive. In 1999 anyone close to me committed suicide. My grief & aching sadness wanted expression, & they found it in music. Ideas for songs about the tragedy started coming to me in quick succession. On long walks. In the automobile. Without me asking for them. They were asking for me. In about six weeks I wrote 13 songs, each of them based on an idea, & each of them better than most anything I had forced while banging away on my guitar in my loft years earlier. & they became my first album.
On top of that, an idea came for a suicide prevention event — called, "Out of the Darkness" — that has now raised millions for the cause. That idea would seldom have come to us sitting in our conference room at Pallotta TeamWorks trying to force an event in to being. It came from a confluence of tragedy & emotion & timing. &, as a result, it was authentic, not a contrivance.
The idea may not come when you require it to, but when it does, it will be right on time. & it will be true to who you are.
So, my advice to you: Go get an ice cream. Go ride your bicycle, or whatever it is you like to do. Relax a small bit. You cannot generate the next giant idea at will anymore than you can make the love of your life walk in to the room in the next half hour.
Look. & wait. & while you are at it, have a small faith — in life, in God, in the universe, in whatever you think in. The universe is pregnant with ideas. Your passion for them is . They don't go where they are not wanted. But ideas have lives of their own. They have their pride. & they don't reveal themselves to the impatient or the distracted.