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My response to Mitch Dikoff's "14 ways to get breakthrough ideas"

Each day I lose touch with reality and get lost in a daydream or fantasy till I suddenly snap back. Often staring at a wall for a good ten minutes fantasizing about something and having no sense of time or where I am. I experience this about two to three times a day and a lot more while lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. At times my fantasies may seem like funny stories or great ideas at the time, but I eventually come to my senses and realize others would probably think I was crazy. Ditkoffs’s fifth way of getting break through ideas is the first one yet that I find myself agreeing with. He is completely right about the fact that we are discouraged from fantasizing and having a strong imagination. We all reach a certain age, where having an imaginary friend isn’t creative or cute anymore, but is borderline creepy and a sign of mental illness. Everyone has a different imagination, some people, like me, just spend more time using theirs. I cannot imagine not daydreaming or not being able to fantasize at random times of the day, sometimes not always in the best places. Being lost in a fantasy while driving, giving a presentation, or operating heavy machinery are not good times to daydream. The best times to fantasize are: while in class, when your weird neighbor across the hall is trying to explain why he got a mole removed, or while in prison.

Think of a current challenge of yours. What would a fantasy solution to this challenge look like? What clues does this fantasy solution give you?
Currently my challenge is trying to figure out how to not be so broke. The last time I checked my bank account I had $22.50 left. Which can’t buy much, but I am able to buy 22 burgers off the dollar menu and maybe a juice box. My fantasy solution would be to marry Donald Trump’s daughter. And if she declines I plan on forming my own Columbian drug cartel. I really hope Ivanka Trump accepts my proposal because I’m too nice of a person to be a kingpin and my negotiation skills fail to even help me borrow a pencil from someone in class when I forget one. This fantasy clue gives me no ideas; I will never marry Ivanka Trump, nor will I ever be the head of a leading South American drug cartel. But I do think I can manage to get a job over the summer that does not include matrimony or a lengthy prison sentence.

Number eleven of this list is something I find myself doing majority of them. I agree that this strategy is a great way at having a break through idea. I find that working with a friend on an idea is much easier and turns out better than if I were to work alone. The old cliché that “two heads are better than one” may be old and overused but it is true. When working with a friend with a similar weird sense of humor, we are able to work off one another. If one of us is to introduce an idea, we don’t immediately shut down one another, but we try and take it to another step. We both have different perspectives on an idea and are able to work together to make it work. In certain things such as music and drawing I work best alone, without anyone else’s input. However, when working on a story idea for a short video or script, working with someone else is always my first instinct. Sometimes I feel that what is funny to me and my friend may not be as funny to others but at least it makes us laugh. Brainstorming with someone else is also a great way of knowing if you idea sucks or not. If I suggest something that makes absolutely no sense, my friend has no problem telling me that I am an idiot and shouldn’t be allowed a brain.



I disagree with Ditkoffs’s thirteenth way of having a creative breakthrough. In this idea, he suggests that if you having trouble getting a breakthrough idea jumpstart it with a book or a quote. I believe creativity isn’t something that you can force to happen. It’s about waiting for an experience to happen or coming across something that you are able to build into something that is considered a “break through idea.” Not everyone is creative, just telling them to get a book or read a quote won’t enable them to have a sudden spark in creativity, and the same goes for me when it comes to algebra. Telling me to read an algebra book isn’t going to make me suddenly great at math. I think the best kind of creativity is spontaneous and unplanned.