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Ideas

For several years as part of my morning journaling, I had the habit of writing down three ideas every day as a way to shake off the creative cobwebs. 

 

Often, these ended up being low-effort (e.g., drive-thru barber shop, VR knitting), but occasionally I’d write down something that made me go, “Hey, why hasn’t anybody actually done that yet?”

 

These are some of my favorites I know I won’t have the time or wherewithal to ever pursue. To my knowledge, none of them already exist. Please steal at your leisure (but let me know if you need copywriting support):

Topbowl/Bowl-Bowl

In a typical bowling alley, you rent one lane and stay there your entire game. 

 

What if instead, you bowled in every lane at the alley, moving from left to right? 

 

And what if each lane was different, featuring jumps, pins that move, and other obstacles you must maneuver your ball around?

 

Similar to Topgolf, RFID could be used to track your ball, score, username, and turn order as you move along the lanes. 

 

The nature of the game may tempt players to roll harder than they might normally. Thus, the balls would be lighter and the floors a damage-resistant surface that’s easy to maintain.  

 

To prevent parties from bunching up and the need to have groups play through, at every five or so lanes there could be a small hang-out/holding area with drinks and food. Some sort of automated system or an employee could then tell a group when it’s ok to proceed to the next lane. 

 

Like a normal bowling alley or Topgolf, the space could also have restaurants, bars, private event rooms, activities for kids, leagues, etc. to generate additional income. 

 

Other ideas for lane obstacles: 

  • “Water” hazard—a ditch with a bowling-ball sized drain at the bottom that connects with the ball return.
  • Putt-putt classics—windmills, clown mouths, ramps, pipes, etc.
  • Sniper—the lane randomly chooses one pin (of say, five) you have to hit while leaving the others standing. 
  • Dogleg—Even though the lanes would be standard width, they could “bend” using bumpers to create a windy path to the pins. 
  • Shorts and longs—A lane could be half the length of a normal one (or twice as long).

Midwest-themed restaurant

U.S. states with a large transplant population often see restaurant and fast food chains follow those expats to their new home. 


In Midwesterner-rich Florida, there is a Skyline Chili in Clearwater; the nation’s largest White Castle in Orlando; and more Culver’s locations than in any other state outside of Wisconsin and Illinois. 

 

A sense of identity around “home” and longing for familiar tastes are powerful, and I think the Midwest has both a unique enough cuisine and enough delegates living beyond its borders that a Midwest-themed restaurant would be successful. Not to mention all of the demographics that have maybe never traveled to the Midwest or that would just think it’s a funny place to go for a random night out (and then discover that it’s really just delicious comfort food). 

 

And since a lot of Midwestern staples are derived from Scandinavian, German, and other European cuisines, it could have tourist appeal in the I’m-an-American-in-Japan-and-am-curious-what-Japanese-McDonald’s-is-like kind of way.

Name

The low hanging fruit would just be <person’s name> + Midwestern Grill or similar,  but it’d be more fun to pay homage to a colloquialism like:

  • Jeet
  • Ope
  • OhShure

Whatever the name, it should probably end in an ‘s’—if not, Midwesterners will put it there anyway.

Style/Format

Casual, sit-down. The concept could also be tested first as a pop-up restaurant or food truck. 

 

Ambiance

I once visited a bar in Savannah, GA called Moodright’s whose decor I can only describe as the basement of your cool uncle’s 1970s/80s bachelor pad meets the bowling alley where he would hang out on league night. Think wood panel walls, beerphranelia, and felt pool tables. Really, something like this (or a less contrived Applebee’s vibe) would pair well with the menu.

 

Could also lean on Midwestern hallmarks like craftsman and farmhouse architecture, unfinished basements, and cozy blankets everywhere (which will come in handy when the thermostat is set purposefully low and the waitress encourages you to just put on another layer).  

 

Menu

The options are endless. Just a few ideas:

 

Entrees

Cincinnati chili

Goetta

Knoephla

Runza sandwich

Toasted ravioli

Various regional pizza styles (Chicago deep dish, Detroit-style, St. Louis-style, etc.)

Sides

Cheese balls and crackers

Green bean casserole

Fried cheese curds

Pigs in a blanket

Pretzels with beer cheese dip

Desserts 

Chippers

Chocolate buckeyes

Kringle

Jell-O molds

Sugar cream pie

 

One gimmick for stews and soups could be to have a crockpot (complete with classic floral design) put in the middle of your table to spoon out yourself, similar to hot pot concepts.

 

Self-driving shopping carts

Inside a store, these carts would be pushed manually as normal. 

 

But after unloading your groceries into your car and pressing a button on the handle, the cart drives itself to the nearest corral and inserts itself into the back of the next cart. The cart corrals could also double as charging stations.

 

The carts would be equipped with GPS, collision detection, and would move slow enough for pedestrians to easily walk past. The technology could be similar to that of the food-delivery robots on some college campuses. 

 

Carts taking A-to-B routes would be chaotic, so they would be programmed to travel along a vertical “lane” (basically the area where pedestrians walk in a parking lot when a car is passing by). 

 

Benefits

  1. Less employee time spent chasing down stray carts*
  2. No more carts blocking otherwise empty parking spaces
  3. No more stray carts being blown into parked cars

* apologies to the retail employees who, like me working at Toys R’ Us in college, use stray cart duty as a way to avoid dealing with crazed holiday shoppers or look at their phones.

Strength-training program applied to language learning

One rationale for meditation goes something like, “your thinking brain is like a muscle, and muscles need rest.”

 

If that’s the case, then why don’t we train our brain like we do our muscles, too?

 

There is a popular powerlifting program called Wendler 5/3/1. Simply, Wendler is done in three-to-four-week cycles. Each week of a cycle, you lift up to a different percentage of your one-rep maximum for the press, deadlift, bench press, and squat. In the first week, you might lift up to 70% of your one-rep max for each of these lifts, the second week 80%, etc. Once a cycle is complete, you take a week off then start all over again, with your perceived one rep max now being a little higher than before. 

 

I think this kind of structure would lend nicely to language learning, provided the learner has time to be consistent about it: looking at study sessions as ‘workouts’, this means studying three-to-four days a week, each about an hour to 90 minutes. 

 

I know many language-learning hobbyists swear by longer, multi-hour language sessions compared to more bite-size ones here and there, but in my opinion that’s not conducive to busy adult life. Plus, viewing language learning as a structured workout (instead of some sort of ambiguous, never-ending undertaking) might create more long-term buy-in and yield better results.

Other random thoughts

  •  A movie that’s designed to be watched at 1.5x speed.

  • Like the picture-of-yourself-everyday project, but a daily photo of one of the rooms of your house.

  • What if to unlock my computer it had to measure my stress/cortisone levels first–if too high, it would tell me to take a walk. Similar to a breath alcohol ignition interlock device.

  • Could eye tracking software confirm that someone actually read a T&C agreement?

  • Something like disulfiram, the pill that makes it painful to ingest alcohol, but for caffeine.