When you're stuck, force yourself to generate ten ideas.
Not three. Not five. Ten.
The first few will be obvious — the same tired solutions everyone reaches for. Ideas four and five might feel forced. By seven, you're scraping the barrel, reaching for anything that remotely makes sense.
But something happens around idea eight or nine. With the obvious options exhausted, your brain stops playing it safe. It starts connecting unrelated dots, borrowing from different contexts, asking “what if we tried something completely daft?”
The tenth idea? It's either brilliant or bonkers. Sometimes both.
The thing is, you can't get to the wild, wacky, often genius possibilities without trudging through the predictable ones first. Your brain needs to clear out the conventional wisdom before it's willing to take risks.
The rule of ten isn't about generating ten good ideas. It's about getting past your first instinct, your second guess, and your safe backup plan.
What problem are you avoiding because you've only thought of three solutions?