Our thoughts are just random stones thrown into a river.  It is fun to skip stones across the surface, or even lob bigger rocks off into deeper water, but when you have finished you just turn your back and walk away.  Nothing has changed.  On the other hand, an idea happens when we take those stones and arrange them so that they come together as a meaningful whole - a bridge.  After your work, you have created something.  There is a fundamental difference between thinking and developing a full blown idea.  When was the last time you consciously came up with a bridge?  When was the last time you developed a fully blown idea of any significance?

To produce an idea - a truly personal idea - is one of the most human things that we can do, but one of the rarest.  Too often our minds are cluttered with consuming the ideas that we encounter.  Ideas that are not ours, and not anyone in particulars.  In fact most of our intellectual horsepower is wasted in turning over and trying to digest concepts that are not real ideas at all.  Most of these things are little more than half considered opinions or guesses.  As a race, we spend very little time developing any significant life changing, earth shattering ideas.  And that is where mundane living starts.

We treat our brains like they were very handy, but limited, filing cabinets.  We put information in there and when we want it again, we just reach in and retrieve it.  Our highest aim is to be able to store information in a way that it comes out exactly as we put it in, minutes, hours or years later.  How amazing is it that we can study hard and memorize an enormous amount of information and then successfully regurgitate it exactly as needed in an examination?  That makes us almost equal to the pen and paper that we write on. 

Our brains, are worth more than that.  Memorization is for computers, ideas can only be generated by humans.  Yet despite having about 6.6 billion human brains working in this world, there are surprisingly few genuine ideas being developed.  I am as much to blame as anyone in this.  I love consuming ideas.  I read and listen and watch anything to try and suck up as many ideas as I can.  I justify this by telling myself that it is all input which is necessary when I do formulate my own ideas.  But too often consumption crowds out production.

You and I need to consciously switch off the flow of inputs once in a while and start to think for ourselves.  We need to take the time to deliberately think, process and develop our own ideas.  Otherwise we will always be stuck with the same old problems, the same old logic and the same old disappointments that humans have always suffered from.

We all have the capacity to develop ideas, but too few of us use  that capacity. 

6.6 billion brains, and who is producing the ideas?  Will it be you?