"Gut" is "intuition" is "genius"

Hybrid reporting from the field. It turns out that your gut feelings are simply those that you have without first thinking about them. Those, according to recent scientific research, are the most accurate and often more creative. It's your built in genius, the little voice that knows stuff already. The consummate synergizer in your wee little brain that has already sussed it out and has the answer for you, as long as you quit all that damn thinking. Turns out the harder you think about a solution, the more your brain gets in your way about it. SO: quit thinking so much. When I do this idea stuff, roughly half of all the ideas I come up with are those that start with a blank blog entry screen. True there are ideas that I cook up over time, or that I have been itching to get down but didn't have the right venue at the time. But most really good ones, honestly, are those that have sprung out of the raw necessity of trying to get 3 down before midnight! I'm no genius, but the intuition and gut reactions that YOU have might very well be righter than any stewed-over debate of a thought you got.

The other night I blew up my keyboard with ideas, coming up with 8 ideas between 11:26 and 11:52. Most days it takes hours to stew up that many ideas, sometimes they've been cooking for years. But when I looked at the clock and got cracking, the ideas flowed out one after the other.

I had recently read an article that basically says that ideas don't come better with stressful attention to them, but when the person is relaxed, not really thinking of that particular thing in the first place. In my case, ideas occur at all times, and often when I am indeed asking my brain directly for them.

It's true, though ,that the concept might be on to something. The study in the article (I may dig it up soon) went on to say that time was an issue, and that more time didn't equal better ideas or a better solution to a problem. I agree for myself at least. For me, the initial idea is usually on target, with a "gut" feeling when it hits. Intuition? I'm not quite sure. This one, my peeps, is still cooking...