The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 186 - Bad Ideas

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer Waldman.

Jen: I was doing some brainstorming the other day with you. And...

Pete: I was there.

Jen: Yeah, you were there. It was fun. And I realized during that brainstorming sesh that I said something to you which tends to be a creativity unlocker or a stuckness unsticker for us, and I thought it would be worth doing an episode on it. And basically what I said to you is, "This might be the worst idea ever uttered by man."

Pete: Yeah, the best way to frame a new idea is to frame it as a really terrible idea. I think we could definitely, definitely talk about this. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: I do believe that bad ideas lead to good ideas. And I have a rule for myself, a creativity rule that probably...and maybe it'll come up later on this episode, we'll see, that it's a rule that could be applied more broadly than creativity. We'll find out. But basically, my rule is: I will speak any idea, even if I'm certain it is the worst possible idea that has ever been thought of, because in my experience, the bad idea gives someone, whether that someone is myself or the person I'm collaborating with, something to react and respond to, which leads to the next idea.

Pete: Yeah. So I, like I agree a thousand percent. I have so many examples of where this has helped me and others, and I'm so on board with this idea. Let me ask, do you...I think you alluded to this, but like, do you do this with others, as well as just with yourself, if that makes sense? Like, when other people are present?

Jen: Yes, I do. And I always preface it with, "This might be the worst idea ever," or, "I believe bad ideas lead to good ideas, so I'm going to give you my bad idea." I always frame it as like, "I know this is awful, but..."

Pete: Which I think we're laughing at, but it's actually a super important piece of framing, because I use this too. Because, you know, like if I think about a corporate setting, in an organization, often there's a lot of fear about saying something that's perceived to be wrong or silly or ignorant or a bad idea. That's just a reality of a lot of corporate cultures, because of a bunch of hierarchies, and fears, and, "What's the boss going to say," and, "Everyone's going to think I'm silly." And so if you can try and lean into that, or unlock that...or one way to do that, I've found, is to go, "Okay, so here's a bunch of terrible ideas," and then I'll just start talking about, "Here's some terrible ideas," or I'll ask a group of people, "Now, let's list ten terrible ideas on how we might approach going back to the office," for example. So yeah, I think that actually teeing it up through that lens, it unlocks something. Because I think that so often we are afraid of the judgment that will come if we have a bad idea, if people are going to judge us accordingly, of like, "Oh my gosh, Peter is so silly. He came up with the worst idea ever. Can you believe that guy?" But if I actually leaned into it and said, "Here's a bunch of terrible ideas," it actually kind of, I don't know, it feels lighter and like a fun, creative project. So yes to that framing, yes to that framing.

Jen: I'm just, I'm having this vision of like, what does this look like in reverse? Can you imagine if you were in a brainstorming session and someone opened with, "I have the best idea."

Pete: "Here's all the brilliant ideas that I have."

Jen: Oh gosh, what a nightmare.

Pete: People don't say that. But sometimes I feel like that's an undertone of what some people are saying, of like, "This is the direction that we will go forward, because I am the person in charge and this is my idea."

Jen: Yeah, well, that's anti-collaboration. Remember, on previous episodes, you have said humility is a superpower.

Pete: Indeed. Indeed, because of examples like this. You need to be able to be willing to have bad ideas, be wrong, have other people contribute...all of that requires humility.

Jen: Totally. And, you know, one of our superpowers in the world of theatre/acting/making stories that are shared for audiences is in rehearsal, you have to go through all the bad ideas to get to anything that would be like remotely okay to put on a stage. And one of the things I talk about a lot when I'm in my classes is reminding the actors that I'm working with, in an eight-hour rehearsal day, as a director, I'm only looking to keep about ten minutes of what we did that day. Like almost everything we do, we can toss out. We're just looking to experiment. Of course, within constraints, within the reality of the story we're trying to tell. But let's experiment and explore, because we're only going to get to the gold if we dig.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. It's such a...for me, it's such a helpful way to think about getting unstuck. Like I remember, this was a few years ago now, I did a Facebook Live with Seth Godin. Maybe I'll pop it in the Box O' Goodies. It's a bit of a throwback. I can't remember what I said, but hopefully, there's some sort of insight in there. But I do remember that Seth said something in that Facebook Live that really quite like resonated with me. So someone had sent in a question around, "How do you get unstuck," and Pete had gone to like, "I would get a notebook out and start brainstorming twenty ways to get unstuck," like I did a very Pete kind of answer, I would say. And then Seth, in typical Seth fashion, was like, "Well, if you're truly stuck, then it's probably because you're trying to do the same thing over and over, or you're trying to find the right way to do something, when instead what you should actually be doing is trying to find the wrong way to do it, or a different way to do it." And so actually, the idea being, yeah, often we're stuck because we are fixated on this path, as opposed to, "What are other parts that we haven't explored yet?" And so that as a way to get unstuck, I just think is so helpful. We've talked in the past about how one of my favorite things to do with a client, or with myself, is to just pick an arbitrary number and just say like, "Come up with sixteen ways that you could get unstuck," or, "What are forty-seven different ideas that you have that are terrible?" Like, I actually just pick numbers out of thin air.

Jen: Yeah. Something I do with my clients is, I'll...it's so fun to do this. And often we'll do this as a group, like in a class setting where someone's trying to solve a career conundrum. And they're like, "I can't get seen for such and such a show." So we go to the whiteboard, and I'll say, "Give me ideas that you would find embarrassing. Like, if you did this, you would be so humiliated by yourself. Like, let's put those up on the board. Like, what is an idea that would make you feel like such an amateur? Let's just put all those up on the board." And then what's really funny is sometimes those things, actually, when you read them back, you're like, "Wait a minute, some of those aren't as ridiculous as they seemed in my head."

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, that's...I was going to ask you that. If like, have you got examples of where you actually went down the path of, or a client went down the path of, "Here are all my bad ideas," and then eventually, you were like, "Actually, that's kind of not a bad idea."

Jen: Mm-hmm. Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes when you get all the bad ideas out there, if you combo-package them, turns out when they're combined, two bad ideas sometimes make a good idea.

Pete: Yeah, the old combo platter. That's interesting. I think about this as it relates to writing a lot, like my blog, or honestly, even our podcast sometimes. Where, I mean, we have episodes that we never released, because they were bad ideas. After we listened back, we were like, "That was a bad idea, so let's throw that in the bin."

Jen: [laughing] Oh, the thing that's making me laugh so hard is that, like the jerky person at the meeting who says, "This is a brilliant idea," out of the gate...we thought they were really good ideas when we recorded them.

Pete: Yeah, but sometimes we get like thirteen, fourteen minutes in and we go, "Yeah, this is a terrible idea."

Jen: "Mmm, yeah, that's not working."

Pete: Yeah. But we wouldn't have then got to the episodes that we've released, I don't think, without a bunch of these bad ideas. And honestly, I would actually say...I don't know how you feel about this, but this is me. Sometimes, I think that a bunch of the episodes that we even release, I'm like, "Eh, I think that's a bad idea. But let's release it anyway."

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And I definitely feel that way about my blog. Like some of the posts I write, even when I'm releasing them, or even when I look back at them, I go, "Yeah, I'm not sure this is a great idea." But for me, the practice of just putting out a bad idea, for me, it's a way of practicing like getting rid of that fear of, "What happens if you submit a bad idea into the world, or release it? Like, are you going to die?" No, you're not going to die.

Jen: No.

Pete: And so, part of it is practicing even just shipping ideas that aren't...maybe they're not completely horrendous, but they're not great. And I just think about that quite a lot as it relates to writing and podcasting.

Jen: Well, you know, I feel like that is a lesson I have to learn over and over and over again. Basically every Monday night, since the podcast comes out on Tuesday, there's that little like, "Hmm. Okay, I've listened back. I've given this the thumbs up, and the green light. I really hope I didn't miss something. Well, here goes nothing." And there are times where I've listened back after we've released something and been like, "Not our best." But to your point, most of the time...well, in the case of our podcast, every single time, nothing bad has happened as a result of sending something imperfect out into the world. And in fact, you and I talked about how much we enjoy engagement with our listeners, when someone will reach out to us and say, "I heard this. Have you thought about it this way?" The only way we're going to get that is if we're willing to put the imperfect idea out there.

Pete: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I think the other thing that that reminds me of, that's happened a few times, is like, who determines "bad"? You know?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Our version of "bad" might be different to the Listener A's version of bad, which is different to Listener B's version of bad, and Listener C's. Like, we've released episodes...oh, this has happened so many times. We've released episodes, and I'm like, "I don't know if this is a very good episode. But like, let's get it out there anyway, because it's Monday night." And then we get emails like, "Oh my god, this was such a great episode. I loved that when you thought about this. And now, I'm thinking about this." And we're like, "What?"

Jen: Uh, i.e., Cold Showers. What?

Pete: Cold Showers.

Jen: People love the Cold Showers episode.

Pete: I still can't believe that's an episode that we thought was good enough to release. It's so funny to me, so funny. What were we thinking? But then conversely, sometimes, like recently, I remember there was an episode and I was like, "Oh, I think this is one of our best ones," and we just got crickets.

Jen: Sometimes that happens, sometimes that happens. You know, this is making me think of...I feel like we must have mentioned this on the show at some point. But I know that when you and I are working together when we're not recording, we use these terms all the time, and they are "shitty first draft", which is that tool of permission to just get it on the page. And using the word "shitty" is so freeing because it's like, "If it's shitty, I've won. Because the assignment was, 'Create a shitty first draft.'" And the other is, Brene Brown talked about it on her very first episode of her podcast, a "FFT". (I'm going to curse. Turn down the volume if there are kids listening.) "FFT" stands for "fucking first time". And again, there's just like some freedom in that.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: It's funny that I turned down the volume for the "F" but not for the "S". That's really interesting.

Pete: Yeah, we're going to have to mark this explicit on the podcast app.

Jen: So sorry, so sorry about that.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And I've even gone so far as to adopt a phrase that I heard someone say...and I wish I could give this person credit, but I don't remember who said it. "Zero draft", which is the draft before the shitty first draft.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, that's rough. It's rough. So that reminds me of like, again, referencing Seth Godin, he's talked about...he says this all the time, if someone's struggling with writer's block or if you hear him talk about writer's block, he says, "Show me your bad writing." Like if you truly have writer's block, his assertion is it's because you're not willing to write bad writing. You're stuck trying to write good writing. And so he will often say to people, as a prompt, "Well, show me all your terrible writing. Like, show me where your bad writing is. If you can show me a bad writing, then I'll show you someone who hasn't got writer's block. Because eventually, something will kick in and you'll be like, 'You know what? I can do better than this.' And it's almost like your better writing-self takes over eventually, or your better creative-self takes over eventually, you've just got to give yourself permission to do the bad writing first."

Jen: Mm-hmm. Okay, here's another version of what we're talking about. So, you and I are working on this project together. And I was feeling very stuck within the project that I just, I couldn't break free of the things that we had already said about it to find the nuance in the new ideas. So we each had a homework assignment, which was to propose a new structure for the project.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And I basically rebelled, and proposed a structure for a completely different project. And I remember sending it to you, and I said, "Here's my work. This was not the homework assignment," and I sent it to you. But what was so amazing is within a couple of days of that, I was able to get back on track with the old project (or the actual project) and find more nuances because I had decided to just abandon and reject it for a couple days and go in this totally different direction.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like that's a micro example or a great example of first principles thinking, and the inverse of that idea. You know, when you hear...often in a corporate setting, I've heard it, is like, "But that's the way we always do things around here," as a justification for like an old archaic process, or system, or way of approaching a problem, which is stifling innovation and curiosity. And I think what you articulated is the inverse of that, is like, "Here's how I could think about innovation, curiosity, and, you know, kind of out of the box thinking." Which is to, as hard as it can be, to remove yourself from what we said we had to do, or were doing, or the constraints that we'd set for ourselves, and just explore way back in first principles, which is like, "What is it that we were trying to do? What could it be that we...like, what are other ways we could achieve the thing we want to achieve?"

Jen: Basically, there is this thing that's coming to mind right now, there is a book for children that when my daughter was much younger, before she could even read, that we used to look at, and the purpose of it was to spark her creativity. The book was called Beautiful Oops! And it's basically a series of images of something going wrong, and that thing being turned into something beautiful. Like a spilled can of paint, and then what you make out of that spilled can of paint. Or, "Oh, you accidentally, you know, poked a hole through this piece of paper. Well, now what could that turn into?" And I feel like sharing a bad idea is like creating an intentional beautiful oops. And I'm going to drop a link to that book in the Box O' Goodies because anyone who is a parent of a small child, or a friend of someone who needs to give a gift to the small child, it is such a wonderful gift.

Pete: I love that. I don't know why this is what I concluded from what you were just sharing, but I just feel like what I heard was ideation, and as a result, probably, creativity is a skill, like a muscle. That the way that we practice being creative, the way that we practice being innovative or ideating is to get out a bunch of oopsies...is that what you called them, "oopsies"?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Bad ideas? Because we hear often, well, I hear often, "I'm just not very creative," or, "I need someone who's thinking in a more innovative way because our team isn't that innovative," and I feel like what is worth articulating to people when you hear that is, "No, it's a skill. It's a muscle. It's because you haven't given them permission to come up with a bunch of bad ideas. The reason you think you're not creative is because you're trying to come up with the right, one solution to this thing. Like, what if you gave yourself permission to come up with sixty-four terrible ideas?"

Jen: Yeah. It reminds me of a quote, I think Thomas Edison, that in order to invent the light bulb...this is me butchering the quote, friends. "In order to invent the light bulb, I first had to invent a hundred ways not to invent a light bulb."

Pete: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Jen: So what do we make of this, Peter Shepherd?

Pete: Well, to me, I've found it...I'm sure I borrowed this from somewhere. But I've always found it helpful to think about the people that I admire, whether they be thought leaders or friends or researchers or entrepreneurs or whoever they are, I've often found it helpful to think of them as standing on a pile of really bad ideas. That the reason I look up to them is because in my mind, I'm like, "Wow, look how successful and amazing and brilliant that person is, standing up there on their pedestal," and I find it helpful to think about the pedestal being, just like whatever image that comes up for you, this mountain of terrible ideas, and that is why they're up there.

Jen: I love that, the pedestal of bad ideas. That if you want to elevate your work/raise the bar/level up, the way you're going to do that is by putting a lot of bad ideas out there first. Bad ideas lead to good ideas.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.