Do you remember the last time a silly idea crossed your mind? Oh, you would have tossed it away won't you? Ideas come and go as unpredictably as the weather. When you are struck with an idea, you will probably ask yourself whether it is worthwhile pursuing. If it is not too silly, you might confide with someone else just to seek their opinion. But what if you think that it is a really silly idea? Would you just brush it off and forget about it?

Ideas are actually a priceless commodity! Whether you considered it silly or not, you should get into the habit of jotting down that idea somewhere, so that you can refer to it later on. A lot of people don't know that ideas have an element of time to it! An idea might not have any value at the time of its sparking, but might be very useful at another period of time. Unfortunately, most people just toss away those ideas that they considered silly, without knowing that they are actually throwing away 'gold'. Would you like to save those ideas so that you will be able to make something out of it later on? I call it 'idea regurgitation', and I use it to add to my repertoire of ideas bank. You can use those saved up ideas for many things, irregardless of whether you are at home or at work. Let me show you how to make full use of all the ideas that happened to cross your mind.

Ideas should be jotted down on a nice book, and each one should be indexed with a number. Diaries are best, especially those with leather cover. Treat this book as you treat your treasure chest. Next, cut out small portions of paper, and write down a number on it to represent each of the ideas that you have written down on the book. Now, roll up the small piece of paper with the written number into a small paper ball and put it in a large glass jar. If you don't like the paper ball idea, you can always put those colored paper especially designed for small little origami stars. The idea of putting the numbered paper balls into the glass jar is to encourage you to fill it up with your many ideas. You can visually see how much ideas you have generated by just looking at the jar.

The next thing that I normally do is to juggle up the glass jar containing the little paper balls and pick up two of them. I will do this during those quiet moments where I have everything to myself to ponder on things. Remember, these paper balls represent those ideas that I have jotted down in the book and now, I will just pick any two with random. I will then check the two numbers from the two paper balls and find what the two ideas were about. What follows is the most interesting moment for idea juggling. I will now ponder on the two ideas. And in most cases, the two ideas will have little in common. The idea here is to juggle the two dissimilar ideas and combine them into one bigger idea. Some people called it idea anchoring, but no matter, the idea is to associate two component parts into one. On many occasions I could combine two seemingly useless ideas into a new useful entity! Of course, some times, you just can't fit a square peg into a round hole, but no matter, it would have served as an exercise in creativity. So you get the idea. This 'idea regurgitation' exercise will expand your ideas bank many folds. If you were to practice it often enough, you will have a great repertoire of ideas. Like the Great Wall of China, with every brick you lay, the wall will expand until it becomes a gold mine. Whenever you are being challenged for new ideas, you will find that you can easily spark new solutions to those everyday problems that might come your way. If you are a teacher, your students will find your creative ideas interesting enough to pay attention. If you are in the corporate world, your many ideas will bring you much needed admirations. There are other ways to generate ideas, and each individual will have their own unique methods. So do you.

Yap Tat Meng

Ideas are Gold platted at invention book