Most people worship originality. They think the muse hates them, that she only favors a select few — the "geniuses" who pluck their best ideas out of thin air.

They're wrong.

Great ideas aren't manifested. They're crafted.

You're reading this on a device that's a camera, a phone, a computer, and music player. Nobody "invented" that. Someone was just curious and playful enough to ask: what if they were all one thing?

If you struggle to generate good ideas, it's likely because your brain defaults to one way of thinking and ignores the other three. It's like trying to build furniture with a screwdriver.

Over the next four weeks, we'll be exploring the four thinking modes to help you become a better creative thinker. Today, we start with my personal favorite: Integration.

Integration is about seeing connections where others see separation. It's when you take two things that have nothing to do with each other and ask: "What if they did?"

It's not invention. It's combination.

Think of integration as playing with Legos instead of sculpting. You're not creating new blocks — you're snapping existing ones together in ways no one has before.

Steve Jobs didn't invent cameras, phones, the internet, or music players. He asked: “What if they were one device?”

That integration — camera, phone, internet, and iPod in your pocket — sparked the smartphone revolution. He took existing Lego blocks and found a killer combo.

Nobody needed it until it existed. Now nobody can live without it.

Isaac Newton saw an apple fall. He knew from other astronomers' work that the moon orbited Earth. At the time, these were considered fundamentally different phenomena: earthly physics versus celestial mechanics — two separate rule books for two separate realms.

But Newton asked a heretical question: “What if it's the same force? What if the gravity pulling the apple down is also keeping the moon in orbit?”

That integration — collapsing the artificial boundary between terrestrial and celestial mechanics — gave us the universal law of gravitation.

Swiss engineer George de Mestral came home from a walk with cockleburs stuck all over his clothes and his dog. Annoying as hell.

But instead of cursing and picking them off, he slid them under his microscope and saw tiny hooks grabbing onto loops in the fabric.

He asked: “What if I could engineer this on purpose?”

Ten years of research later: Velcro was born. The first synthetic hook-and-loop fastener, inspired by a burr nobody else took the time to study.

De Mestral wasn't trying to invent Velcro. He just saw a connection everyone else was too frustrated to notice.

See the pattern? The best ideas aren't born out of nothing. They're the children of other ideas.

The iPhone, universal gravitation, and Velcro didn't need new ingredients — just someone brave, curious, playful enough to ask: "What if these things belonged together?"

Choose two domains, tools, or concepts that have nothing to do with each other.

Examples:

Don't overthink it. The more random, the more exciting.

Ask "What if they overlapped?" Don't judge. Explore. Give yourself permission to play.

"What if writing was more like lifting weights?"

"What if therapy was more like product design?"

Most of these will sound stupid at first. That's fine. You're looking for the one that makes you go "wait a minute… actually…"

Not every combination works. Most don't.

But the ones that do? They feel obvious in hindsight.

That's integration. It makes people say "duh, of course."

Combine two disconnected things in your work.

Force it. Make it weird. Report back.

Most combinations will fail. That's fine. You're looking for the one that makes you go "wait… this is super interesting."

Now that you know how to bring ideas together, next week we'll learn how to tear them apart — because sometimes less is better.

Your creative brain has 4 thinking modes. You just learned the first. Only three more to go.

See you next week.

Love,