If you’ve been vibin’ with THE WORK up until now, the vibes just got 10x better.

Today, I’m bringing you a new layout with a couple of new sections. My goal is to pack the email with even more insights, lessons, and inspo while keeping the reading time to a cup of coffee or a healthy poop.

These changes are inspired by readers like you. This newsletter is a living project that will continue to evolve, so please don’t hesitate to shoot me your feedback and ideas and let me know what you think either by clicking “reply” or by answering the question at the bottom of this email.

Without further ado,

TODAY’S MENU

• 💡 A technique for producing creative ideas

• 🧠 Actors share important lessons about memory

• ⛰️ The importance of unimportant lives

• 🤗 The happiness formula

— Santi

P.S. If you love THE WORK, share it with a friend. And if you hate it, share it with an enemy.

A 5-step formula for producing ideas

A few weeks ago, I shared the secrets of Leonardo da Vinci’s creative genius.

This week, I bring you a super low-key and simple technique that will turn you into an idea-generating machine.

Years ago, James Webb Young, an advertising legend, wrote a small but mighty pocket-sized guide for producing ideas that would become a bible of sorts for creatives at advertising agencies. In it, Young describes his simple 5-step formula for coming up with ideas:

1. Gather

2. Brainstorm

3. Incubate

4. Eureka!

5. Shape

This technique has served me and countless other creatives extremely well. Mr. Young’s mission was to demystify the creative process. My mission is to continue that work, and my hope is that his technique serves you as well as it’s served me.

Get your pen and paper ready.

Step 1: Gather

There is no such thing as an original idea.

An idea is simply a combination of two (or more) seemingly unrelated elements. Mr. Young calls this gathering raw material.

This gathering requires you to have some sort of tool or container where you store ideas, concepts, and questions as they arise.

And guess what?

Your head is the worst place to store ideas. Write them down—in a notebook, notes app, whatever works.

These captured ideas will become the raw material or building blocks for new ideas.

Step 2: Brainstorm

The second step, Mr. Young says, is to chew on the ideas you’ve gathered. Part of this process is bringing two (or more) ideas together and seeing how they relate to each other.

For example, as I write this, I'm exploring how high entropy (thermodynamics) presents in one's own personal life and how that could be a driver for positive change (personal development).

You want these ideas to be wacky, daring, bold, odd, and audacious.

Use your creative faculties to find the connections.

Step 3: Incubate

The third stage requires no effort.

Here, you relinquish control and hand over the problem to your subconscious mind. This is the moment where you let your intuition take care of the work that needs to be done.

In other words, you get out of the way.

This is probably the hardest step of the process for most. Just forget about your work—watch a movie, read poetry, get lost in a tune, stimulate yourself emotionally. Whatever gets your logical mind to shut up.

After all, the logical mind is the enemy of creative flow.

Step 4: Eureka!

Now, if you've done the previous three steps right, out of nowhere, the idea will appear.

For ideas to come, you have to let go.

This is where the mystery of creative genius comes from. People don't see the previous three steps.

It wasn't the apple hitting Newton's head that led to the Theory of Gravity. It was his in-depth study of the laws of motion and the nature of forces through his synthesis of Keppler and Galilelo's ideas (gather and brainstorm) and the fact he was chilling under a tree (incubate) that led to that Eureka moment.

Step 5: Shape

The final stage is where a lot of new ideas come to die. Sometimes because of perfectionism, other times because of self-doubt.

The truth is that the journey from the idea world into the real world requires a great deal of courage and a whole lot of patience.

Ideas don't always just work mostly because the exact conditions they need simply don't exist yet. It takes a patient and caring human to mold either the idea to the world or the world to the idea.

Don't make the mistake other people make and become too attached to your idea. Put it on display for criticism. This is where you shape and develop your idea for worldly use.

Ship it, then shape it. An idea kept private is as good as one you never had.

When Michelangelo carved his greatest masterpiece of all time, David, he did so out of a piece of marble block that had been abandoned by two other sculptors due to imperfections in the marble’s grain.

25 years later, a 26-year-old Michelangelo would salvage the massive piece of marble and carve a work that was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of the time.

More often than not, your idea will be nothing more than a partially shaped or rough block of marble. Step five is your chance to chisel away at the damn thing until your great idea emerges.

There is never a shortage of people with ideas in our world, but there are very few people who know how to successfully implement a good idea.

If you take anything out of this post, I hope it’s these 3 things:

• Write down all your ideas

• Sharing ideas leads to more ideas

• All good ideas need time

What ideas are you chewing on nowadays? What’s stopping you from sharing them with the world? Just hit “reply” to this email and let me know. I’d love to hear from you!