How to come up with good ideas | Jim Keller and Lex Fridman

How to come up with good ideas | Jim Keller and Lex Fridman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=709z-t7IiFw

Is that the source of. If you were able to deconstruct like where some of your best ideas came from? Is there a process that's at the core of that? Like, so some people, you know, walk and think. Some people, like in the shower, the best ideas hit them. If you talk about like Newton, Apple hitting them on the head. No, I found out a long time ago I process things somewhat slowly. So like in college I had friends who could study at the last minute, get an A. Next day I can't do that at all. So I always front loaded all the work. Like I do all the problems early, you know, for finals, like the last three days, I wouldn't look at a book because I want, you know, because like a new fact day before finals may screw up my understanding of what I thought I knew. So my, my, my goal is to always get it in and, and give it time to soak. And I used to, you know, I remember when we were doing like 3D calculus, I would have these amazing dreams of 3D surfaces with normal, you know, calculating the gradient. And this is like all come up. So it was like really fun, like very visual. And if I got cycles of that, that was useful. And the other is, is don't over filter your ideas. Like, I like that process of brainstorming where lots of ideas can happen. I like people who have lots of ideas and they just let them sit. Then there's a. Yeah, I let them sit and let it breathe a bit and then reduce it to practice. Like at some point you really have to. Does it really work? Like, is this real or not? Right. But you have to do both. There's creative tension there. Like, how do you be both open and precise? Have you had ideas that you just. That sit in your mind for like years before the. Sure. It's an interesting way to just generate ideas and just let them sit, let them sit there for a while. I think I have a few of those ideas. Yeah, that was so funny. Yeah, I think that's creativity, discipline or something for the slow thinkers in the room, I suppose because some people, like you said, are just. Yeah, it's really interesting. There's so much diversity in how people think, you know, how fast or slow they are, how well they remember or don't. Like, you know, I'm not super good at remembering facts, but processes and methods. Like in our engineering, I went to Penn State and almost all our engineering tests were open book. I could remember the page and not the formula, but as soon as I saw the formula, I could Remember the whole method? If I'd learned it. Yeah. So it's a funny. Or some people could. I just watched friends, like, flipping through the book, trying to find the formula, even knowing that they'd done just as much work. And I would just open the book, and I was on page 27, bottom half. I could see the whole thing visually. Yeah. And, you know, and you have to learn that about yourself and figure out what function optimally. I had a friend who was always concerned. He didn't know how he came up with ideas. He had lots of ideas, but he said they just sort of popped up. Like he'd be working on something. You have this idea, like, where does it come from? But you can have more awareness of it. Like, how your brain works is a little murky as you go down from the voice in your head or the obvious visualizations. Like when you visualize something, how does that happen? Yeah. If I say visualize a volcano, it's easy to do. Right. And what does it actually look like when you visualize it? I can visualize to the point where I don't see very much out of my eyes, and I see the colors of the thing I'm visualizing. Yeah, but there's like a. There's a shape, there's a texture, there's a color. But there's also conceptual visualization. Like, what. What are you actually visualizing when you're visualizing a volcano? Just like with peripheral vision, you think you see the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good way to say it. You know, you have this kind of almost peripheral vision of your visualizations. They're like these ghosts. But if, you know, if you. If you work on it, you can get a pretty high level of detail, and somehow you can walk along those visualizations and come up with an idea, which is. But weird. But when you're thinking about solving problems, like, you're. You're putting information and you're exercising the stuff you do know, you're sort of teasing the area that you don't understand and don't know, but you can almost, you know, feel, you know, that process happening. You know, that's. That's how I, like, like. Like, I know sometimes when I'm working really hard on something, like. Like I get really hot when I'm sleeping. And, you know, it's like, we got the blankets. I wake up, all the blankets are on the floor, and. And, you know, every time once. Well, I wake up and think, wow, that was great. You know, Are you able to. To reverse engineer. What the hell happened there? Oh, sometimes it's vivid dreams and sometimes it's just kind of like you say, like shadow thinking that you. You sort of have this feeling you. You're going through this stuff. But it's. It's not that obvious. Isn't that so amazing that the mind just does all these little experiments? I never. You know, I thought. I always thought it's like a river that you can't. You're just there for the ride. But you're right. If you prep it. No, it's. It's all understandable. Meditation really helps. You got to start figuring out you need to learn language of your own mind. And there's multiple levels of it, but the abstractions again, right? It's somewhat comprehensible and observable and feelable or whatever the right word is. Yeah. You're not along for the ride. You are the ride.