Ideas Come From Thinking

This sounds really obvious, but ideas come from thinking. Ideas come from observing and thinking. Comparing this to organic chemistry, the observations are the starting materials and the thinking is the heat & stirring and the product is the idea. If you take observations and stir them together with the heat and light of thinking, you will get ideas. They won't always be good, and sometimes your yield will be low, but that's how it is done.

Taking the chemistry analogy a little further, if your starting materials are contaminated (faulty observations), or your glassware isn't clean (clouded thinking, perhaps), or if extra ingredients are accidentally added (assumptions) the results won't be as good.

How do we make good observations? Here are some guesses:
1. Try to observe things. Period.
2. Try to observe with as little interpretation as possible.
3. Be aware of assumptions that can act as their own additional starting materials.

What are the thinking techniques that are equivalent to good lab practices?
1. Start thinking!
2. Be open to various options -- don't just stop with the first idea or conclusion.
3. Draw parallels and make analogies.

I'm going to try to put these theories into practice and report the results in my next post.