The Cull

Ideas are like rosebushes.

They need to be pruned. If you are waking up with yesterday's thoughts, free up the space for some new ones. May I suggest writing the old ones down as a way of putting them to bed or in context. 

If you are obsessing about ideas rather than developing them, get them on paper, or screen.

Perhaps if they are concepts that have touched you, write them down and make them rhyme. Pretend it's verse. And by the time it's on the page, it pretty much will be. Verse can make a simple idea mythological. Strong. And pruning your own thoughts and ideas is healthy. Don't be frightened to cast out something that may have a bud,  if you think it is too weak a bud to generate real growth.

Look at the ruthless bastards that the world knows as gardeners!  Taking the sword to living tissues more viciously than Victorian surgeons. And yet, they are the ones with tidy garden (if you'll forgive the phrase).

New ideas need not just a bit of space for themselves to sit in, but free physical intracerebral space in which to grow. The almost infinite capacity of the human mind needs to prepare a bit of space with finite boundaries. It needs to have the decks swept. Paradoxical, yes, and maybe it would not be necessary if we were masters of our brains. But we are not. 

The space that you free up should scream to be filled. Then,  ideas can leak, and spread, and flow. They can paint and taint other ideas and before you know it, they are developed. Into new ideas, maybe slightly better, perhaps revolutionarily different. One step closer to a truer truth that is more relevant and has more capacity for the leverage in day-to-day life. You are standing on the shoulders of your own giant.

I think I'm going to go and de-rust my secateurs.