Brainstorming

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking."
- George Patton

Seek other people’s opinion before embarking on something. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to try to plan and do things alone. You can save a lot of time, energy and money by seeking advice from other people.
So, what's the best way to do this? Here's one brainstorming strategy that can be quite effective if you are at an 'idea stage'.
First, it helps to understand that a person can be an optimist, realist, or a pessimist depending on his mood. The optimist (or the 'idea builder') loves to work with ideas, to dream and build upon them. The pessimist (or the 'gloomy Gus') on the other hand will tend to find faults and predict depressing forecasts. The realists will be a mixture of the above two, with practicality.
So what happens when you throw around your ideas to people? Well, one those 'personas' will kick into action - The 'optimist' might share your enthusiasm and offer more great ideas. The 'pessimist' will focus on all the way your ideas will fail or won't work. The 'realist' will offer you a plan of action of how to implement the ideas, and also point to the potential pitfalls.
All this different advice and opinions might bog you down if you don’t find a productive way to 'process' this feedback. One way of going about this is to:

1. First go to the optimist(s) to build upon your idea.
2. Than go to the pessimist(s) to find faults in these idea.
3. Next - Work on again with the optimist(s) to 'rectify' the faults found by the pessimist(s).
4. Repeat Step 2 again if you feel the need. Else start working on a plan of action with the realist(s).
5. Let the pessimist(s) find holes in the plan of action.
6. Work with the realist(s) and the optimist(s) to better the plan in case holes are found.
7. Repeat the process again if necessary.

I am sure you get the idea.
It also helps to remember that, while it is a good idea to seek advice from the people who are experts in their respective fields, don't immediately dismiss the layman's opinion. The lay person can sometimes offer you a very different perspective.

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• Creativity