Ten Ideas a Day (The Idea Muscle)
Write ten ideas every day to keep your creativity from atrophying
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
Altucher's rule is to write ten ideas every day about anything: businesses you could start, books you could write, or improvements Jeff Bezos or Gmail should make. The mechanism is deliberate muscular strain: the first few ideas come easily, but forcing ideas seven through ten makes your 'brain sweat', and that effort is what strengthens the idea muscle. Volume, not quality, is the target, because 3,650 ideas a year vastly exceeds what you could ever act on, and most ideas are deliberately bad. Because execution is itself a subset of ideas, the same practice improves your ability to execute. Sometimes an idea generates real value: sending strong idea lists to people who can use them can convert directly into dollars.
Origin
Part of Altucher's broader Daily Practice, developed while rebuilding after repeated financial collapses; he has written every day for 30 years since childhood and made the ten-ideas rule his creative-health input.
Core principles
- 01Creativity is a muscle that atrophies within days or weeks of disuse.
- 02The goal is exercise, not good ideas; good ideas take care of themselves.
- 03Most ideas are bad, and that's fine.
- 04Execution is a subset of ideas, so you also need execution ideas.
- 05Straining for ideas seven through ten is the whole point.
How to run it
- 1
Choose a prompt
Pick any category for the day, such as business ideas, book ideas, or improvements to a company like Amazon or Gmail. It doesn't have to be about you.
Pro tip Using other people's companies removes ego and widens the aperture.
- 2
Write ten ideas
List exactly ten ideas on that prompt, writing them down rather than keeping them in your head.
Watch out Aiming for fewer than ten lets you stop before the muscle is worked.
- 3
Push through the strain
Expect the first few to be easy and ideas eight, nine and ten to be genuinely hard. That difficulty is the exercise.
Pro tip If your brain is 'sweating' at idea seven, you're doing it right.
- 4
Don't judge quality
Accept that most ideas are bad. The purpose is exercise, so let the good ideas emerge on their own over time.
Watch out Judging each idea as you write kills the flow and the volume.
- 5
Optionally add execution ideas
For an idea you like, generate ideas for the first steps to act on it, since execution itself requires ideas.
Pro tip Emailing a strong idea list to someone who can use it can turn directly into dollars.
In the wild
After buying Cards Against Humanity, Altucher's ten ideas for the day became the ten rules for a spin-off card game where each card is a Trump tweet and players match tweets to world crises. He wrote out the words and even some execution ideas for the first steps. The exercise produced a concrete, playable concept in one sitting, illustrating that the goal was to work the idea muscle, not necessarily to launch a hit.
→ A complete game concept generated as pure creative exercise, ready to cheaply test if desired.
Common mistakes
Chasing only good ideas
Trying to produce ten winners misses the point; volume and strain build the muscle and good ideas surface by themselves.
Stopping at the easy ones
The value is in ideas seven through ten, so quitting early skips the actual workout.
Trying to act on everything
You can't execute 3,650 ideas a year; expecting to turns exercise into paralysis.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone who wants to reliably rebuild and maintain a high output of ideas and options.
Not ideal for
People who only want a handful of vetted, actionable ideas rather than daily volume practice.
From the transcript
“creativity is a muscle and like any muscle it atrophies within days or weeks if you don't use it so I just make sure I'm…”
“you come with 10 ideas for the exercise not to come up with good ideas you'll the good ideas will take care of themselves”
From the episode
How To Improve Every Day & Harness The Power Of Ideas - James Altucher - #137
James Altucher