Here's a lot of highlights from our discussion:

We must learn to speak out before learning to ideate. Both of us grew up in an Asian environment where following rules and respecting those older than us are the norm. We were taught to follow conventional ways and just listen to what the elders say. If a thing works, there's no need for suggestions or improvements. Over the years, we've learnt that this archaic ideology limits our growth. Speaking up is essential to ideation as you'll need to share your ideas to make it known. There is basically no point in ideating and keep quiet with your grand idea even if it can change the world.

What would be the experiment which you'd bring to space? In the 1980s, this was a question from a contest sponsored by NASA where they'll pick the winning experiment to be launched on the Space Shuttle. What would be the experiment in your submission? You might try to think of a cool and mind blowing idea to impress the world but the winning idea is actually a simple one. John Vellinger an 8th Grader is the winner of this competition with his experiment of hatching chicken eggs in space. We was genuinely interested how chicken eggs would hatch in micro-gravity conditions as you're required to roll the egg over from time to time on earth to prevent the embryo from sinking to the bottom of the egg. This proves that you don't need a 'cool' idea because every idea is cool as long as you have a reason behind it.

Learn more: The Amazing Story of the Cold War Space-Egg Race

You don't need to think outside of the box, just widen your box. While many people think that great ideas comes from thinking outside the box, most ideas generally come from thinking in a wide box. We just need to expose to new new people, knowledge or experience to widen our box. Whenever we try to think of an idea, we're doing a deep search within our mind. With a diverse background and experiences, the idea will be unique and special even though we're just thinking within the box.

The ideas in this podcast comes from questioning everything and thinking about problems which we face. Verene faced this problem of thinking podcast topics in when we started. However, Andrew explained that ideas for each podcast can come from everywhere. Andrew just lists interesting questions which he thoughts of and personal problems which he faces as future podcast topics.

"Eventually I'll need to solve this problem, why not bring it up for discussion and find solutions from other's perspective." - Andrew

Try some mental exercises. Mental exercise is a form of mind workout which forces you to think of solutions in tight situations. Here are two exercises which we've done before:

1. Think of how you would achieve something and how would you do it to achieve it 1000x better.
2. Think of you would achieve your dream and how you would achieve it in 50% and 10% of your planned time.

These exercises doesn't aim to find a solution which is 1000x better or can be done in 10% of your time because it may be impossible to do that. These exercises just force you think of ways which are unconventional and you'll usually end up with solutions which works better and takes less time than your original one.

Observe your surroundings. Most of the time, the ideas which we're looking for are already in our head. We just need a cue to connect our brain to them. Constantly observe your surroundings to find cue, change your work environment by working in different cafes or take an idea walk when you have the time. These small actions may surprise you as you may encounter cues to your ideas when you observe your new environment.

More ways to generate ideas from these article:
- New Ideas - Strategies and Techniques
- What is Idea Generation?

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