There is nothing exist such as Good Idea or a Bad Idea, every idea has its own worth based upon on how well they are solving the problem. After creating your idea, the next step is to evaluate them. The most common way of judging an idea is to see how well it does in solving the problem in hand. In general, the effectiveness of the solution divides the pile of ideas into good and bad ideas.

At the start of originating ideas, it is recommended not to bound your self within a box, have no limits on thinking despite whether they are possible or not.

Bad Idea:

No matter how “bad” the idea is, there is a use to it. All you got to do is stop and think about it. It may not be able to solve your current problem but might have links to the solution of the future problems.

When evaluating your ideas ‘no bad idea’ rule now no longer applies, and is in fact necessary part of convergence in working towards a fine set of solutions which are valuable and effective solutions to the problem at hand.

A bad doesn’t mean it worthless, and should not be investigated. As proven by the famous story of Edison, who needed 999 ‘bad ideas’ to get to his one great idea. If he had discarded these ideas instantly as failures, he’d never have gotten to the one light bulb that did work. Or in his own words:

I didn’t fail 999 times, I just found 999 ways that didn’t work.

Bad Ideas can be considered as the great source of inspiration especially because they are ‘off-target’. These ‘off-target’ ideas may lead us to see the problem in a very different direction which in-fact may lead us in solving the real problem.

Good Idea:

Good Ideas tend to have nature that they connect with problem at a first glance. But don’t just let them go inside your best stack of solutions. Try to see what is good about it? and why? what is the reason of selecting it. You have to make sure that the idea is a great solution to the problem and see whether its excites you for the long run or not. A combination of both relevance to the problem and originality creates a ‘creative solutions’.

Conclusion:

1. When evaluating your ideas, treat the bad ones with special care, try to analyze each and see the pro and cons.
2. Don’t accept good ideas too quickly, good ideas may seem really good at the start but might make you fall later since you didn’t analyzed them well.
3. Any idea can be improved – be open to feedback and to re-evaluate your idea and further improve.

Recommended Tools:

Evernote: Evernote is a new capturing software that’s available on iPhone, Mac, PC, mobile phones and Firefox. Essentially, you can capture ideas anywhere, while it syncs everywhere. Make a note on your iPhone, and it syncs online and on your computer desktop. However, the real benefit of Evernote is the ability to read text inside of images. If you took a screenshot of your desktop, Evernote would go through and scan the screenshot and extract any text it found with it, allowing you to search for it later. A very quick and handy way to capture everything and index it into a searchable database.

Remember the Milk: Remember the Milk (RTM) is in a whole different league when it comes to portability and the number of options for capturing ideas. Not only do they have great task management software, they also integrate with a slew of services that help you capture ideas. That’s right, idea capture at it’s finest.