An idea is defined as;

  1. a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action, or
  2. the aim or purpose.

In chess, an idea is seeing a tactical or positional pattern and using this vision to create a strategy. This translates to pretty much any game, but the ones that come to mind for me are Counterstrike, Valorant, League of Legends, Overwatch, Starcraft, etc.

In painting or music, an idea is the directional container in which the art is created in.

In climbing, an idea. is the rough outline of the movement puzzle (either as the climber, or the route setter). Envisioning how the body will move, the sequence of the moves, the different ways in which the route can be sent.

In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, an idea is recognizing patterns in position and timings, creating strategies to submit the opponent.

Ideas are fundamentally the concepts or goals we create based on the information and patterns that we recognize.

If you expand on this definition and understanding of what an idea is, it kind of feels like a idea is this broad stroke over the canvas of infinite space that represents possible paths. Even if you are unsure of whether or not the idea is possible, the fact that you could think of it has value. This is creativity.

Mate within 3 moves by sacking your Queen. Play macro and fast expand into a ling+muta+ultralisk composition against an opponent that is trying to win through an earlier, but weaker timing attack. The melody can leverage these notes in this rhythm, the painting should use these colours. Lache-dyno move that can be tethered into a rose. There’s an opening to throw the opponent off balance and gain control of their dominant arm here.

We have ideas, and we can try to afford these ideas through the actions we take, the environments we design, and the constraints we apply (or do not apply).

How do you increase the quality of your ideas? How do you increase the volume of higher-quality ideas?

What have been some of the most creative ideas given the circumstances? How fast can one generate ideas in real-time?

I wonder how deep you can go into specific niches and how refined ideas can become when you’ve spent 100 or 10,000 hours on something. I wonder if the ideas at 10,000 hours are actually any better than the ideas that one has at the beginning of the journey – or if it’s simply a matter of taste.

But I also wonder if there’s a idea mode1 that can be applied here. One that suggests looking at everything we do from the lens of it being an idea that we are executing on, bringing to life, shaping. Some vision or concept, a theme or motif, a brush stroke that we are enacting based on the data we have about ourselves, the people around us, the external environment, the world.

  1. A mode of operation on the basis that everything you do, or can do, is an idea. ↩