Our brains are lazy!

There’s a well-documented reason we, as humans, are so quick to go with the first viable option: our brains are lazy. Well, our brains aren’t lazy, but rather we have evolved to conserve as many mental resources as possible.

In his book Don’t Make Me Think (New Riders), Steve Krug refers to this concept as satisficing: “Most of the time we don’t choose the best option — we choose the first reasonable option.”

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.