The Good Enough 10%

So, how would you eat an elephant?

In this oft-used riddle, the answer is 'one bite at a time.' Trite? Yes, but that makes it no less relevant.

When trying to be creative in anyway, people block themselves when they try to solve the entire problem all at once. Ideas that may be valid get discarded for any hole or inadequacy they have.

The trick to coming up with ideas is to be willing to settle for a start.

In improvisational comedy (a form of theater where the performers have nothing prepared in advance, like the TV show 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'), a performer who tries to figure out exactly what he is going to do in advance will be hopelessly overwhelmed. Moreover, he will be lost if something arises that doesn't quite go along with his idea. The performer's best bet is to go strongly with whatever idea comes up with, even if it is not fully formed. As the performance continues, the performer's own creativity will flesh out the idea as it goes.

In the same way, rather than trying to solve a problem all at once, a person should just try to get the start of a plan out. This idea can then be built off of, fleshed out, modified, and developed into a solution. Will any original idea develop into a great solution? Of course not, but many ideas that seem weak in the beginning may develop, and they should not be discarded just because they seem incomplete.

In the martial arts, when two people are fighting, one person does not have to be twice as good as the other to win. In fact, a person doesn't even need to be a better fighter overall to win; he just needs to be a better fighter at the right moment. Even then, he doesn't need to be a lot better in one moment; he need be only ten percent better in one moment to win the fight. This is true if the fighter knows how to leverage that ten percent. You see, a fighter doesn't need to win the fight with one punch; he just needs to use the 1/10 of a second that his opponent is stunned to land a second punch, and then use that opening to land a third, and so on and so on. In this way, the fighter leverages a 10% advantage into a 100% victory.

The fighter leverages a 10% advantage into a 100% victory. In the same way, you can leverage a 10% formed idea into a 100% applicable solution.

EzineArticles Expert Author Avish Parashar

Avish Parashar has a refreshingly unique approach to speaking and training: identify the fundamentals of success and then give people the tools to implement those fundamentals. Avish's approach can be deceptive; it's fun, funny, interactive, engaging, entertaining, and ridiculously simple. Success isn't complicated, it's simple. So visit the web site to learn more about the "Ridiculously Simple Ideas That Everybody Needs and Nobody Uses."

Learn More: http://www.avishparashar.com

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