What do you do when you decide to think of an idea? Sit down at a desk, look out of the window, chew a pencil, doodle on a pad, worry about the bill from the insurance, mope about that girl you saw in the streetcar.

In other words, you think of everything but producing an idea.

Result, no idea produced.

You have two ways to go about solving your difficulty,— the wrong way or the right way.

Here is the too familiar picture of the wrong way. You neatly set before you some blank paper. You sharpen your pencils. You light a cigarette. You gape, then glare at the uncompromising white sheets upon which no idea appears. Your mind wanders, thumping heavily on the flowers that bloom in the spring and other matters that have nothing to do with the case.

At last, with a sense of horror on a par with that of the man in "The Pit and the Pendulum" as your time-limit expires, you seize upon some half-baked plan that suits no one. You admit you are beaten.

This process is in complete accord with the definition of Kettering, the dynamic research wizard of General Motors: "Experts are people paid to tell you it can't be done."
Continued from ....How to Get IDEAS by Estelle H. Ries
Idea People Win