I was privately working through some possibilities — getting ideas on paper — and I noticed myself thinking more than I was writing.

I was pre-filtering.

Unknowingly, I was judging ideas as good or bad before they made it to the page.

I was conducting a thought exercise with zero risk, and I was still taking zero risks. Nothing to lose, but I was still afraid to “fail” in my efforts.

* * *

When you’re trying to generate ideas, capture all of them. A good idea might be on the other side of a dozen bad ideas. Or a hundred.

Consider the activity like throwing a cast net through your mind. You might pull in a lot of things that you’ll need to throw back, but you just might catch a few trophies.