For fifteen years, part of my job was to come up with creative ideas, every week, under extreme time pressure, with about a million people watching.

I was good at it.

Really good.

But I didn’t start out being good at coming up with creative ideas under pressure. I had to learn.

In my case, creative ideas were necessary because I was the executive producer of a hit television comedy show. In your case, creative ideas are necessary because the outcome of your situation may depend on them.

It is true that there are some high pressure situations that do not require creativity, particularly those that involve repeated physical actions. Shooting the game-determining free throw, for example, doesn’t require a lot of creativity. It’s definitely high-pressure, but it’s done more or less by rote.

The same goes for landing an airplane. Trust me, a private pilot. I made hundreds of landings and apart from the first ones when I was first learning, they are quite routine. And they are even more routine for an airline pilot, who has made thousands and thousands of landings. They don’t require a lot of creativity.

Until something goes wrong.

On July 19, 1989, United Flight 232, en route from Denver to Chicago, lost all three hydraulic systems at 37,000 feet above the ground. What this means, in layman’s terms, is that all flight controls were instantly rendered useless. Imagine if you were driving down a highway and suddenly neither the steering wheel nor the brakes did anything. Now imagine that you are seven miles in the air, traveling 500 miles per hour, with almost 300 people in your car.

That is pressure. And it required creativity.

Together, the crew discovered that they could maneuver the plane, albeit roughly, by manipulating the throttles of the multiple engines. It wasn’t perfect. The right wing scraped the runway on landing and the plane caught fire. Almost half of the people on board died. Goal more than half lived. Why?

Because the crew came up with a creative solution, in the middle of one of the most pressure-filled situations imaginable.

Your high-pressure situations may not be so dire; in fact, I feel pretty confident predicting that they never will be. But, unless you’re shooting that memory muscle memory free kick, they likely require the same kind of creativity.

So here’s the key mindset to have in that situation: don’t discount anything.

“That’s crazy, let’s get back to reality!”

“I’m not going to listen to an idea that comes from a humble intern!”

“That won’t work, because the engines are not designed to turn the plane!”

When there is pressure, does it matter how far-fetched the idea may seem or who came up with it?

Of course, no. All that matters, in that moment, is a successful outcome.

So put your ego aside. Listen to all the ideas.

Because that idea you’re about to discard … could be the one that saves the day.