Turning Ideas Into Action!

Ideas Like to Flutter Off

Many of us have tons of ideas. For some, ideas are the lifeblood that flows through our very souls connecting our hopes and dreams. But how do we get these esoteric beauties out of their glittery realms and into the harder world around us?

When we pick up a pencil, like dreams often do before we can give them our wakeful attention, ideas may floof coyly away. What are we to do? The solution is wonderfully and maddeningly easy: Just get started!

But start how? Where? And with what?

Consider the hummingbird. One fine day in spring her tiny self — along with her many wee cohorts — gets a bee in her bonnet and off she zips on a thousands + kilometer odyssey up to her summer haven. That impulse to go — to up and leave — and head somewhere on inspiration alone: that’s you and your ideas!

You fly and fly and replenish enough to keep flying. Maybe you don’t know exactly why you’re flying nor where you’re going, but you fly on and on. You keep going until you eventually arrive somewhere. Maybe just because you’re pooped or maybe because you get a right feeling a place; whatever the reason, you stop flying and switch gears.

That’s you with your unexpressed ideas. You’ve flown for miles and miles and now you’re perfectly poised to do what’s next!

And what is next?

Nest building!

This is the crux of the whole thing. To give foundation to ideas you have to build a safe place to nurture them.

The Start

For our hummer this means finding an out of the way space where she can start to build her home, where it won’t be molested by marauding crows, voracious squirrels or vagabond jays. What do you need to support the growth of your ideas?

• sketch or idea pad
• (sacred) daily time within your schedule (they say the muses attend to those who keep regular hours)
• an open mind (no need to self censor in these stages – let it flow!)
• potential outlets (ideas prefer arriving to places where they can grow)
• supportive resources

The Process

So now the place is found. Our tiny companion now transitions into nest building mode. She seeks items that will somehow fit and stick together to become something whole. Something that accommodates the goals inherent in the ideas. Which brings us to my favorite part of the whole process! The tipping point that transitions conceptual idea formation into dynamic attainment of the aspirations they’re meant to address.

Not everything sticks at first - or even ever...

This is where you ‘put one foot in front of the other’ and proceed. What I love about this part is this is the phase where false starts, little booboos and other mistakes (mis-takes) can be fairly easily absorbed by the process itself as long as the process continues. That’s the important point here: As long as the process continues!

For many of us after a series of little failures we may give up. That’s not cool. That’s where we abandon our nest because a few clumps of moss didn’t stick right.

What does the hummingbird do? She carries on with her work even though not everything she brings back works. She goes with the law of averages instead.

Let me personalize this. This blog you’re reading is a nest. I build it post by post, sketch by sketch. Not all of my efforts ‘stick’ with every reader. Some fall flat onto the hard ground. But some do stick and eventually because I don’t give up it’s coming together into a cohesive whole. It is inevitable that this will happen. As I keep at it I can not fail.

Here’s the other thing. The eggs all this nest building is for may not hatch. It may be conditions external to my efforts won’t allow it. But that doesn’t mean my nest isn’t perfect! We nest builder have to remember that what we create may not accomplish the goals we sought through our building endeavors. I may compile the posts on this blog into a beautiful book no one wants to buy. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t created a beautiful book!

Let’s say the hummingbird’s nest contains unhatchable eggs gets plucked out of the tree by a birder who sends it to a natural history museum that puts it in a glass case where generation after generation of inquisitive human eyes come to witness this miniature piece of beak-built architecture. Maybe one of them gets the idea to create a whole new way of assembling materials based on the experience of seeing this wonderfully adapted work.

The original intention remains unattained but crazy larger accomplishments because of those original efforts is!

That is Storybook Ending C.

Storybook Ending B is: great nest, no hatchlings — second even better nest is built!

Storybook Ending A? C + B.

Biscuit Math

We humans have a charming habit of measuring stuff in relation to ourselves. Thus we segment areas in feet and report the height of horses in hands. Tiny things we say are thinner than a hair, presumably one of our own.

As earthlings we measure vast distances of space by their quantities of Astronomical Units (AUs) which are themselves the average 93 million miles between the earth and our (ha!) sun. Industrial designers necessarily take into account the average sized human when they concoct items for the mass market like dinette sets, keyboards and automobiles.

When I invite you to consider an ordinary chair, in your mind’s eye you do so and as it forms you have a sense in your whole body of how you might relate to that chair in space. Through habit, or experience, or familiarity with the function of ‘chair’ you sense the thing wholly when you consider it mentally.

Those who study cognition call this sense of self in space in relation to the external world exteroception. This includes the body negotiating itself within the volumes of the external world or proprioceptions as an auxiliary component to moving around without always banging into things. Fancy words for easy ideas. I want to shine a light on these concepts we tend to take for granted for a moment because it is these ways of being that cause us to have instant unquestioned reactions to what we perceive.

Enhancing the creative process often entails examining things heretofore taken for granted.

We humans are hardly unique in this ability to judge space. Many’s the pony who has figured out how to wipe an unwanted rider off her back by trotting under a low hanging branch. In her mind the accommodating limb was as high as a pony’s back but lower than a mounted child. Clever pony! I think it’s safe to conclude that this little equine has a well conceived sense of her physical self in relation to the world around her.

Song birds, when they fly back to their nests tucked in to the safe interiors of shrubs demonstrate a pitch perfect ability to slip themselves into these irregularly tight spaces showing an impressive full body dexterity. They zoom in, fold their wings at the exact perfect last moment and hop with nary a bonk to the beak.

My dogs seem to measure aspects of their days in biscuits. The beginning of the day is spent anticipating the peanut butter supplement hidden biscuit. Midday focuses on the after-visiting-the-barn biscuit back at the house. Then we’re on the Main Event of the Big Bowl of meat, rice and kibbles. We finish up with the evening last call for outside come back into the house reward biscuit with an occasional good dog bedtime biscuit. So time might be chunked into an equivalent of one Big Bowl = our clocked minute and one biscuit may = one second.

Activity

Define the world around you in terms of different animals observing it. Let’s say you chose an ant – how will he describe distance? Size? Speed? Will a cheetah do so differently? What are some terms a fast cat might use that are different from what a slug might say?

Creative Consideration

Construct a chart choosing various critters and the measured worlds they inhabit from their point of view.

Bonus Info

• Knee-high to a grasshopper
• In a coon’s age
• Dog tired

Discussion

Where I currently live (Lexington, Kentucky USA) they say we’re within ” a day’s

drive” from over half of the rest of the country’s population. Day’s Drive being the measurement. Indeed there are so many counties here (120) which is more than typical, because the early state planners wanted each county seat to be within a half day’s ride on horseback from the furthest point within that county. Now the measurement is in Horseback Rides. What other interesting measurements can you think of or create? Share them with your group or jot them down in your notebook.

Idea sparks:

• How many Snickers bars in a week?
• The meeting was how long in cups of coffee?
• That wait in the doctor’s office was how many insipid magazine articles long?
• The outside temperature is how many layers c-c-cold?