{
  "id": "try-the-bad-idea",
  "number": "011",
  "edition": "Ideas",
  "title": "Try the bad idea",
  "standfirst": "An intentionally wrong direction can reveal what sensible thinking keeps hidden.",
  "when": "Everything you produce feels predictable, correct and strangely lifeless.",
  "way": "A deliberately bad, strange or dangerous idea can move the work outside the route your judgment already knows how to approve. The aim is not to make something bad. It is to gather information from somewhere less familiar.",
  "tryThis": "Make the version you would normally reject first. Exaggerate what feels wrong about it. Then identify one quality worth carrying back into the work.",
  "notice": "What appeared when being sensible was no longer the objective?",
  "person": "Rick Rubin",
  "source": "The Contemporary Blueprint archive",
  "quote": "We never know until we try things what works, and what doesn’t. I often think of a bad idea and on purpose, try that bad idea, just to see where it leads. Sometimes it turns out not to be bad, sometimes it’s worse than I thought, but, the spark of seeing this bad idea through, you start recognising where it can go.\n\nIt’s a bad idea, but if this part of it got amplified, and this part went away, maybe it’s be more interesting, and that’s the next iteration. It’s a series of iterations and looking for clues. Look for bad ideas, strange ideas, dangerous ideas, and see what happens.",
  "sourceUrl": "https://youtu.be/60pHJXUjaJY",
  "contexts": [
    "idea",
    "stuck",
    "perspective"
  ],
  "free": true,
  "related": [
    "give-it-a-temporary-name",
    "make-the-decision-visible",
    "make-the-first-mark"
  ],
  "sourceArchive": "The Contemporary Blueprint",
  "referenceKind": "quotation",
  "referenceExcerpt": "We never know until we try things what works, and what doesn’t. I often think of a bad idea and on purpose, try that bad idea, just to see where it leads. Sometimes it turns out not to be bad, sometimes it’s worse than I thought, but, the spark of seeing this bad idea through, you start recognising where it can go."
}