Ideas

I just finished reading a very good little book last night, it is called How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster. It certainly succeeded; I had so many ideas after finishing it that I could not sleep. The following is a quote from the book which in turn is a quote from Roger von Oech’s outstanding book A Whack on the Side of the Head: “But often the best ideas come from cutting across disciplinary boundaries and looking into other fields for new ideas and questions. Many significant advances in art, business, technology, and science have come about through the cross fertilization of ideas. And to give a corollary, nothing will make a field stagnate more quickly than keeping out outside ideas.” I know I have certainly have found this to be the case. If you are working exclusively with one sport go learn about other sports. When I was working with baseball, some of the best drills for reaction for the first and third basemen came from hockey goal keeper drills. There is entirely too much inbreeding of ideas. Travel around the country and observe football strength and conditioning coaching. I am willing to guarantee you won’t see anything different from school to school. That may not be necessarily bad, but it much more comfortable to follow rather than lead.

Final thought for the day – “If you don’t know where you are going every road leads there.”