The other constraint you can relax is a little surprising: publication. Writing essays doesn't have to mean publishing them. That may seem strange now that the trend is to publish every random thought, but it worked for me. I wrote what amounted to essays in notebooks for about 15 years. I never published any of them and never expected to. I wrote them as a way of figuring things out. But when the web came along I'd had a lot of practice.Incidentally, Steve Wozniak did the same thing. In high school he designed computers on paper for fun. He couldn't build them because he couldn't afford the components. But when Intel launched 4K DRAMs in 1975, he was ready.

You need humility to measure novelty, because acknowledging the novelty of an idea means acknowledging your previous ignorance of it. Confidence and humility are often seen as opposites, but in this case, as in many others, confidence helps you to be humble. If you know you're an expert on some topic, you can freely admit when you learn something you didn't know, because you can be confident that most other people wouldn't know it either.

There's a trick for getting importance too. It's like the trick I suggest to young founders for getting startup ideas: to make something you yourself want. You can use yourself as a proxy for the reader. The reader is not completely unlike you, so if you write about topics that seem important to you, they'll probably seem important to a significant number of readers as well.

I'll sometimes let through a sentence that seems clumsy, if I can't think of a way to rephrase it, but I will never knowingly let through one that doesn't seem correct. You never have to. If a sentence doesn't seem right, all you have to do is ask why it doesn't, and you've usually got the replacement right there in your head.

Here's our idea generation process:Spend at least 1 hour a day brainstorming ideas.Once you have a list of ideas, run them through these criteria:Is it new and beneficial?Could it produce a great click-through rate? (10%+)Could it produce a great average view duration?Will it make someone want to watch more of my videos?

MrBeast gave me some very direct advice to apply this:'Sit down for at least 1 hour a day and brainstorm ideas.'‍

Those are the 4 things I look for in a video idea.But how do you consistently come up with all-star ideas?Recently, I found a "technique" to achieve this.I stumbled across an interview with Ed Sheeran. He spoke about how he thinks about coming up with song ideas. It was exactly how MrBeast instructed me to come up with video ideas.Ed compares creativity to a 'dirty tap.'When you turn the tap on, dirty water starts to flow out.If you leave it on for long enough, clear water will start to flow out.When you start coming up with ideas, your mind has to clear away all the bad ideas  to get to the good ones.

The quality of your idea caps your thumbnail and title.The quality of your idea caps your ability to keep people entertained.The quality of your ideas will determine the success of your channel.

I’m inspired by a simple mantra: “Go First.”

Lucky people move with life, not against it.  They swim with the current in a wide, ever-expanding river. By doing so, they maximize their surface area of serendipity. 

Cross-pollinate ideas from different industries, disciplines, and places. Surround yourself with a diversity of people and develop a variety of skills. The space between ideas will give you a fresh perspective that you can use to problem solve and come up with new ideas.