This latter method uncovered a Wall Street Journal story featuring Ki Nassauer, junker and author of “Junk Beautiful: Room by Room Makeovers” (affiliate link). It followed her as she pursued junk at a rural South Dakota hoarders house to look for ideas to fit into her twice-yearly magazine, “Flea Market Style,” and annual “Junk Bonanza flea market festival.”
Within the story, there were fifteen creative thinking skills demonstrating how KI Nassauer turns “junk ideas” into treasures with potential.
Combing through the story and looking to generalize what she does, here are fifteen ways any of us can turn junk ideas into treasures when we need a creative kick start:
1. Space out the deadline for when you need to come up with an idea to give yourself more time
2. Take care of your rich idea sources
3. Take advantage of high probability idea sources
4. Spend more time looking for other ideas
5. Have a creative partner to stimulate ideas
6. Always say “Yes” to new ideas initially
7. Go where others won’t to look for additional junk ideas
8. Change the angle from which you’re considering the idea
9. Look at just part of junk ideas and throw out the rest
10. Turn the junk idea upside down
11. Stack or put junk ideas together
12, Consider outlandish ideas you’d typically overlook
13, Turn the idea around to its opposite
14, Apply different support or resources to the idea
15. Pretty up marginal ideas any way you can
These 15 creative thinking skills to turn junk ideas into treasures are definitely worth considering, in my view, to help get you unstuck creatively. – Mike Brown
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