[rguzman]

one of the things that helps generate new ideas that can be cultivated is the ability to be playful. once a given problem or subject is sufficiently loaded onto a brain, if that person can relax and have child-like naivete about poking and prodding, novel insight is usually not far.

cultivating this ability is fairly well understood in a lot of domains, i think. two examples that are top-of-mind are improv and jazz.