Along time ago I started swimming in a type of "dog style" that is very convenient for me because it is very relaxed, I don´t get tired and I don´t throw my arms on the side with the risk of hitting other swimmers.
Today while I was swimming I did two interesting activities:
On one side, while I was swimming, I was recalling several acronyms I have created to remember techniques to generate ideas, problem solving, innovating, thinking, etc. (in English language and in Spanish language) with the idea of ensuring they are all stored in my long term memory and I keep on revising them periodically (ie. when I go to swim, that is once a week).
On the other side, swimming is a good activity to be thinking at the same time, so even though I miss having some place to write ideas, today I did something that surprised myself. I followed one of the acronyms to use different techniques to generate ideas. With each technique I can produce several ideas. As while I am swimming I don´t have a notebook to record the ideas, so that I can continue improving them, what I have done is a bit different:
For example, I started by doing a brainstorming and while I was swimming I thought about a number of ideas. In this case, I shortlisted one single idea that was interesting for some reason, maybe for having some peculiar element. Then I went to the next technique in the acronym and I used it to transform the previous idea and I continued following the same with all the techniques included in the acronym. To be honest, while doing this process, at some point I had to change completely the idea to satisfy the suggestion from the latest tool that I used.
While I was swimming, I was not able to remember many of the ideas that came to my mind with each technique, but I was able to shortlist an interesting one and remember how the idea was transformed by each of the tools used.
This combination of swimming and thinking has been very efficient. On one side I swam without resting as I was very entertained thinking and on the other side, I thought in a different way as at each step of using a different tool to generate ideas, I was shaping them. It was a type of alternative activity of producing and transforming the idea in a simple and cyclical way. Besides, the fact that swimming in a swimming pool is an activity that doesn´t require much concentration, it is an ideal activity to incubate ideas when you are not concentrated in producing them but relaxing mentally.
Today while I was swimming I did two interesting activities:
On one side, while I was swimming, I was recalling several acronyms I have created to remember techniques to generate ideas, problem solving, innovating, thinking, etc. (in English language and in Spanish language) with the idea of ensuring they are all stored in my long term memory and I keep on revising them periodically (ie. when I go to swim, that is once a week).
On the other side, swimming is a good activity to be thinking at the same time, so even though I miss having some place to write ideas, today I did something that surprised myself. I followed one of the acronyms to use different techniques to generate ideas. With each technique I can produce several ideas. As while I am swimming I don´t have a notebook to record the ideas, so that I can continue improving them, what I have done is a bit different:
For example, I started by doing a brainstorming and while I was swimming I thought about a number of ideas. In this case, I shortlisted one single idea that was interesting for some reason, maybe for having some peculiar element. Then I went to the next technique in the acronym and I used it to transform the previous idea and I continued following the same with all the techniques included in the acronym. To be honest, while doing this process, at some point I had to change completely the idea to satisfy the suggestion from the latest tool that I used.
While I was swimming, I was not able to remember many of the ideas that came to my mind with each technique, but I was able to shortlist an interesting one and remember how the idea was transformed by each of the tools used.
This combination of swimming and thinking has been very efficient. On one side I swam without resting as I was very entertained thinking and on the other side, I thought in a different way as at each step of using a different tool to generate ideas, I was shaping them. It was a type of alternative activity of producing and transforming the idea in a simple and cyclical way. Besides, the fact that swimming in a swimming pool is an activity that doesn´t require much concentration, it is an ideal activity to incubate ideas when you are not concentrated in producing them but relaxing mentally.
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