Are You Letting Ideas Pass You By?
There are ideas all around you; you just have to be paying enough attention to catch them.
I just returned from a family trip to the beach. Something about travel prompts 1 million questions to carousel through my mind. This year, the theme was Pelicans… I bet you didn’t expect me to say that.
I’ve seen Pelicans before, but this year, they grabbed my attention and quickly made me realize that I know nothing about them. I can identify a Pelican if I see one; I know that they dive to catch fish, and that’s where my knowledge ended.
Seeing them dive and glide along the ocean’s surface made me want to learn more. In fact, I wanted to be a Pelican as they looked like they were having a good time.
How many fish does a Pelican eat in a day?
How high in the air do they dive from?
What is their wing span?
Do they always stay as a group?
Where do they nest?
What size are their eggs?
What is their wing span?
There was a brief interruption where I wondered if one of my direct reports at work had received his office stipend.
How long do they live?
How much water can they hold in their pouch?
After completing that round of research, I had a whole new list of questions.
- What is the average size of a Pighead fish?
- What do Pighead fish eat?
- What size of groups do pighead fish swim in?
- Other than a Pelican, what eats a pighead fish?
- How many babies do pighead fish have at once? How often do they have babies?
- What are processes that are similar to Gyotaku that don’t require using a real fish?
- If I was writing an analogy about a pelican, what would it be?
- If I was writing a metaphor about a pighead fish, what would it be?
- What are all of the things that a pelican interacts with?
- What are all of the things that a pighead fish interacts with?
- What are other animals that dive?
- What are other animals that fish?
Now that you’re hooked and realizing that you also know NOTHING about Pelicans, I’ll share a few fun facts:
- They live to be 25-30 years old
- They dive from 60-30 feet above the ocean
- The pouch holds 3 gallons of water
- One of the fish that they like to eat is called a Pighead
I’m really not writing to teach you about Pelicans. I want you to grasp the importance of observation, questioning, and research. Too often, we expect to wake up with a list of great creative ideas, which rarely happens, especially if you aren’t observing, questioning, researching, and documenting.
While traveling is an excellent source of idea generation, another thing that I’ve been enjoying over the last 6 months is looking at picture books. I go to bookstores and come home with books filled with inspiring illustrations, and check out 10-15 picture books each time I go to the library.