the idea sex concept
Back in 2017, listening to solopreneurship, online business, and self-development content walking 40 minutes to and from campus, or passing the rosy pink houses of "The Fan District" in downtown Richmond, Virginia, I came across the concept "idea sex" coined by entrepreneur, writer, and host of "The James Altucher Show," James Altucher.
This term describes the process of pairing two unrelated ideas to produce a new idea.
Part of his "idea machine" practice, which consists of writing down ten ideas a day, the main idea is that new ideas are mostly recombinations.
Plurally passionate, this practice matches my brain precisely. As I wrote about before, I possess high idea productivity. Combining two ideas to birth a third one is easily energizing.
I can combine my interests in cannabis, walkable cities/urbanism, feminist critique, internet culture, dating culture, analog living, marketing, online writing, sustainable mobility, audio, accelerated learning, and language learning. These are all separate categories with micro-categories of skills/knowledge, hobbies, fields, industries, and projects. I can combine any of them with another unrelated idea.
The method?
Come up with ten ideas, creating your first list, and ten ideas for another. Let them have sex with each other.
The first can be about interests/personal projects and the second can be about work/industry. Or one can be about skills and the other can be about knowledge. Or just two lists that both consist of knowledge.
My examples:
Skills: sales, hospitality, copywriting, accelerated learning, audio, cannabis trim work, persuasion, marketing, online writing, solopreneurship…
Knowledge: my "pod education" (the unexpected "education" I received through listening to thousands of hours of podcasts), edTech, the curator economy (the social economy of curating and recommending internet content), cannabis, books, podcasts, car-free lifestyle, analog lifestyle, dating culture, walkable cities, internet culture…
Pairings:
• walkable cities + cannabis (knowledge + knowledge)
• car-free lifestyle + cannabis (knowledge + knowledge)
• feminist critique + walkable cities (knowledge + knowledge)
• audio + sustainable mobility (skill + knowledge)
• online writing + walkable cities (skill + knowledge)
• solopreneurship + sustainable mobility (skill + knowledge)
• audio + curator economy (skill + knowledge)
• cannabis + curator economy (knowledge + knowledge)
• my "pod education" + audio (knowledge + skill)
I can come up with so much more.
Next experiment: test these out, starting with cannabis + curator economy.
The reason I'm writing about this now is because I have a lot of interesting ideas for blog posts that might involve these different pairings.