In other words, there are some serious drawbacks to running with your first flash of insight, and we should all learn to value the importance of multiple concepts.

Don’t stop brainstorming as soon as your first reasonable concept appears.

Creativity is the product of looking at a problem from many different angles. Set an arbitrary number of ideas (3, 5, or 10 ideas can all make for a good starting point) to dream up until you start evaluating each concept’s potential.

Sometimes you need to push past the first obvious idea to uncover the best possible solution to your problem. Of course, your first idea might not be your worst option, but it might not be your best one either.