Solving a problem or producing an idea may be entirely different from putting your solution across. It reminds me of the effort of a certain student who had to work out a mathematical problem which his professor had given him. Handing in the work, he complained about the difficulty of the example. He’d gone over it six times, he said, to be sure he was right. “That’s fine, my boy,” the professor said, much pleased at this diligence. “That’s the way to do it when you want to be sure.” The boy replied, “Yes, Professor, here are the six different results.”
The idea which the subconscious sends you may seem to be ever so logical, ever so perfect for the purpose, and still not fit the world of reality. Again, you must always take the precaution to check it for other reasons. For example, as previously stated, if you sent down incomplete or inaccurate information, your idea result may need revising. You should not submit your idea to your boss or anyone else until you have made any corrections or changes that seem desirable. You should certainly not go all out with it until you have submitted it to critical scrutiny. You may have thought wrongly, closed the wrong circuit, set the wrong switch. Problems are always being solved wrongly, and the solution taken out to do a job in the world. This can be seen with especially tragic results in the field of international governments and statesmanship. The sorry state of Planet Earth is proof enough. Someone scribbled in the subway, “Peace by 1970–with or without people.” (Editors Note: Sign of the times?)
New ideas can be good or bad, just the same as old ones. The age or youth of an idea has little to do with its value. Some of the greatest ideas are old ones; some of the most foolish are new. The opposite is also true.
In the field of idea production, many fine ideas have been given out that did not bring material success to their originators. After you have solved the immediate problem, the next step may be to convince others to support your idea. When you have reached what seems a satisfactory idea, you then have to detach yourself from it. Pretend to be a disinterested stranger and view it without the emotional excitement of the originator.
Hastily to accept an idea and try it out and then see if it works, and to “admit it” if it fails, isn’t a very sensible procedure. You can save yourself a good deal of trouble and embarrassment by some objective verification of your subjective offering. Your own idea will seem to you as the infant appears to its mother. No baby has an unprejudiced critic in its mother. Try to imagine the effect it will have on the persons whom you wish to be interested. This may be a customer, a buyer, an editor, an audience, depending on the type of idea. Consider how it will arouse their desires for it, meet their requirements, and satisfy their wants.
- Follow the plan of writing down your idea
- State specifically what it is, what it can do, what is required to put it in operation
- Take time to digest this description; re-examine it from time to time
- Guard against half-baked ideas
- Add, subtract, change or modify until you are sure of the soundness of what you have
Simply to imagine and decide on a plan and then to learn, like the burnt child who dreads the fire, how it works and what its consequences are, is not to think scientifically or even adequately.
To see the thing as others will see it in order to arrive at an intelligent estimate of what you have done, you must employ past experience, reason, judgment and discrimination. Do not allow the glow of creative achievement to give you a false sense of victory. Everyone who produces an idea has a wonderful feeling, which is often far from justified. The more practical, detached, objective, impersonal, you can be at this time, the better. It is therefore well, at this point, to take a different view, a critical attitude, and look hard for everything that could be wrong, impractical, inconsistent, or otherwise poorly worked out. It is obviously much better if you can do this yourself than if you give anyone else the chance of doing it. Avoid such errors and embarrassment by being your own severest critic. Refuse to make up your mind too rapidly. Refuse to be too easily satisfied. Refuse to regard a judgment as finally and unchangeably true. At this point you may even aggressively take the view that you may be wrong. Put the conclusion to every test. You may think you have the answer but you must know that you know it by sincerely trying to prove yourself wrong.