Page 40 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Think about different problems simultaneously

Many years ago at the age of 14 I was sitting in a room full of tenth-graders waiting for a math
competition to begin. If you were in the room with me you would have heard the lady say: “You will
have 4 hours to solve 4 problems. I will collect your papers promptly at the end of the contest. Now
you can turn over your sheets with problem descriptions and begin. Good luck!”

After 60 minutes of thinking about the first problem, I thought, “I still haven’t made any progress. If I
spend as much time o n all the o ther pr o blems and make as much pr o g r ess, I will definitely lo se the
competition. Let’s see what the other problems are like.”

I spent 10 minutes o n pr o blem number 2, made a little bit o f pr o g r ess, g o t stuck and mo ved o n to
problem number 3. After 20 minutes, I solved it. I thought, “Wow! Let’s see what I can do with
problem number 4.” In 10 minutes after having thought about problem 4, I got stuck and moved back
to problem number 1. After 15 minutes of thinking I made some more progress, got stuck again and
moved to problem number 2. In 25 minutes I finally solved problem number 2. I was switching
between the remaining problems over and over again until the end of the contest, and by the time the
lady was collecting the papers I had solved 3 problems.

I became the second-place winner and received the right to represent my city at the country level
math competition. But perhaps the most valuable prize I received was an invaluable lesson that helped
me to generate ideas more effectively not only at school but also in adult life. “If you switch between
problems, your subconscious will think about them simultaneously and your productivity at
producing ideas will increase several times.”

The cr eativity r esear cher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi inter viewed 96 exceptio nal scientists, ar tists and
writers and realized that all of them worked on more than one project at a time. If you switch between
several problems, your subconscious will think about all of them in the back of your mind while you
work, rest and sleep, and you will generate many more great ideas at the same time. Working on
several problems simultaneously is one of the most powerful creativity techniques and will
significantly increase productivity of your subconscious mind during the incubation period.