by Sanjoy Kumar Malik
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR IDEA?!
Idea generation may not be tough if you give some dedicated time for that. Actual challenges arise when you pick up one idea from your idea bank and try to give it a realistic shape. It is very hard task and takes time. From time to time, you need to optimize the chosen idea. Here I will describe one technique what I use to optimize my ideas: Built-In-Self-Criticism technique.
Built-In-Self-Criticism Technique
When you apply this technique, you need to play two roles: innovator and criticizer; one at a time. Before going into the details of the technique, you should know your responsibilities (in brief) both as an innovator and as a criticizer.
Major Responsibilities As An Innovator
[1] Remain focused on the fact that why the idea came into your mind
[2] Remove the unnecessary stuffs and give shape to your idea (Important step for optimization – keep repeating this step until you are satisfied)
[3] Find the idea implementation steps
Major Responsibilities As An Criticizer
This step is difficult. It needs courage. First of all, the following question may arise: Why should I criticize my own idea?
Basically when you are a criticizer of your own idea, you are trying to see the idea from a negative perspective: your intention is to improve your own idea.
You change your role from an innovator to a criticizer during optimization of your idea.
After that, you need to throw yourself into the following situations:
[1] Rubbish-idea situation: You should throw yourself into this situation deliberately and try to find out the points where your idea may be rubbish. Idea optimization process starts here – you change your role to criticizer. Here the word “rubbish” helps you enough to improve your idea if you remain open-minded. As a criticizer you should collect the rubbish points. After collecting few rubbish points, you should change your role to innovator again. Repeat this process.
[2] Anybody-can-do situation: This is another technique you can use to optimize your idea. In this situation, you try to degrade yourself as much as possible to feel low. Suddenly you start thinking laterally to imporve your idea so that you can sustain in competition (imagine the competitive situation) – you change your role to innovator again. Practice this technique.
The ‘Rubbish-idea situation’ and ‘Anybody-can-do situation’ together make the Built-In-Self-Criticism technique.
Conclusion
It is very easy to love our own idea. But it is very difficult to criticize our own idea. But if you can do that, your idea will gradually take shape. Moreover, it will be more robust. Definitely, the Built-In-Self-Criticism technique is not the final one. If you have other techniques to optimize idea, please feel free to recommend us.
Sanjoy Kumar Malik is the owner of:
He lives in Haora, India.