Crazy 8s
Eight ideas in eight minutes. Volume before quality.
Crazy 8s is a speed-ideation exercise. You sketch or write eight distinct ideas in eight minutes — roughly one per minute. Speed is the point. When you have to keep moving, your brain reaches past the obvious. The first two or three ideas are usually what everyone's thinking. Ideas 5–8 are where it gets interesting.
How to run this
- Set a timer for 8 minutes. One idea per box. Keep moving.
- Write or sketch — distinct ideas, not variations on the same thing.
- When the timer stops, stop. Incomplete ideas count.
- Look for patterns across the 8 ideas.
- Identify your top pick and name the assumption underneath it.
Crazy 8s
Google Ventures Design Sprint · Jake Knapp · Sprint (2016)Spending 4 minutes on idea 1 and rushing the rest. Set a 1-minute alarm. Incomplete ideas count — the point is to move, not to perfect.
Ideas 5, 6, 7 that surprise you. If ideas 5–8 are the same kind of thinking as 1–4, you stayed too safe and didn't break out of the obvious.
When you have a top pick that's meaningfully different from the first idea that came to mind, and you can name the single riskiest assumption in it.
Try it interactively with WAiDE
WAiDE will push you through the Crazy 8s exercise — keeping you moving and helping you identify what's genuinely different about your later ideas. You'll leave with a top pick and a session report.