Big Smile, No Teeth: First, 'kill all your darlings'

Don't latch on to the first few ideas that emerge from that brainstorming session! Research shows that your brain throws up better ideas later in the thinking process. － 123rf.com

Do you think your first ideas are the best ones? Then maybe we should talk about the Creative Cliff Illusion.

The Creative Cliff Illusion is the concept that our creativity on any given topic declines over time. Using the example of a brainstorming session, the Creative Cliff Illusion would mean our best ideas are thrown out early on and we dry up over time. Basically, we fall off the creative cliff. We fall off the idea cliff into the valley of no ideas, which as a simile probably needed more time to work on, but I’m throwing it out there anyway.