I was sitting at my desk at the office with a few other art directors and copywriters. We were pitching new business for John Deere. The deadline was looming, and the ideas were not coming. I felt frustrated and wanted to go home. For me it is unlikely that an insightful idea will arrive while sitting at a desk trying to have one. My best ideas usually arrive when I'm not looking for them in places like my car while driving down the expressway, or in the shower.
Ok, I'm here at the office! Relax and take a deep breath, I tell myself. A while later the frustration had passed and I was just tired. I was looking at my monitor clicking through photographs of all kinds of John Deere machinery and started thinking about how all the machines move and transform earth. These executions followed.