At home I have a small backyard garden where I grow a variety of fruits and vegetables. I choose what to grow by asking myself two simple questions: Is it interesting to me? and Will it grow in my backyard? If the answer is yes to both, I’m in. It may not work for everyone, but I’ve found that I prefer to find success through playful exploration of different seeds in different areas of my backyard. And that’s how I grow ideas.

First I ask myself what interests me. I might see something in a news article, on a blog, or at a conference. If it grabs my attention for even five seconds it’s probably on my list of things to Google over my lunch break. And if this cool new idea keeps my attention beyond a simple Internet search I’m soon on to more reputable resources. That’s when I might start a folder on my desktop and begin brainstorming in the off hours about where this idea is going. By the end of a semester (about 16 weeks) I have dozens of folders like this on my desktop, or nestled one level down in a folder called IDEAS.

The next step is to ask myself, will this grow in my backyard? The reality is that not all ideas, even crazy sexy cool ideas, may be the right ideas for you, in your neighborhood, in the current climate, to grow. Sometimes it’s just not the right time for an idea, so I store it away for another season. Other times an idea takes too much work, or takes me too far off course from where I want to grow myself. In fact, most of these dozens of ideas that I’ve gathered will never grow for me for one reason or another. I have friends who are more strategic in targeting only the best seeds of ideas from the get-go, and to them my casual approach may seem wasteful of my valuable time and energy. But after years of working this way I’ve realized that this personal process of discovery, exploration, criticism, and analysis benefits everything I do even if that process is sometimes “wasted” on infertile seeds of ideas.

And no time spent thinking – critically, creatively thinking – is ever truly wasted because your mind thrives on the experience. Consider scrapped ideas like rich, fertile compost for your better, stronger ideas. I tell my students that if they want one good idea they need to come up with dozens of bad ideas first. That’s not just some tricky professor catch phrase to create busy work; science is on my side. The more ideas you come up with the more likely you are to have at least one great idea in the mix. Just like with gardening, not every seed you plant is going to grow, but nothing will grow unless you take a chance and put those seeds in the ground.

So growing ideas may not be about systematically picking the choicest seed and cultivating it in a controlled environment until it becomes the perfect specimen of an idea. Instead, you can grow ideas by planting lots and lots of different seeds and discovering over time, through playful exploration, which seeds of ideas are going to produce the best fruits. This method may not work for everyone. This analogy might not be working for you at all. But I’ve got a backyard full of tomatoes, onions, cabbage, garlic, rosemary, basil, rhubarb, blueberries, blackberries, figs, and more varieties of flowers, shrubs, and trees than you can shake a stick at. And I’ve got some great ideas growing in my backyard, too.