Ask HN: How to get ideas?

In my personal experience, I haven't deliberately forced ideas, however that could potentially work.

One thing may be to become aware of when you have ideas - I've found I have my best ideas when I'm not sat at my laptop.

The ideas for my two startups came when I built something for myself and found that others wanted it too. These were little problems (at first).

I think a final important thing that comes to mind is that if you have even a twinkle of an idea, then grab onto it with both hands, and work with it. My latest app was a tiny idea and I developed it in just over a month and a half into something of value and I've now just had my first customer. Work with the ideas and eventually you'll find yourself swamped with things to build upon that single idea.

Hope that helps.

Look around for who is selling what.

Meditate. Be passionate. Think for yourself. Read fundamental books. By fundamental I mean "important", not "full of religious bigotry". I got a lot of ideas from Frank Herbert's "Dune", for example. Do things. I mean dont just use your lizard brain to constantly look for new input, dont follow what other people are doing. Start your own pet project. No matter how small. Find the smallest problem you can solve. Ideally a global one. But a local one works too. Anything to get you working. Then the creative juices will flow.

I get ideas by naturally wanting things easy and believing others want things easy too. So once i hit a difficulty, i start looking for ways to make things easier for myself and others.

Learn about how other people spend their work or leisure time. Spend a day in their shoes. You'll see plenty of problems software could solve.