Just Frustrated: The Creative Decision

I've been doing several creative projects as of late, and in hindsight I got to thinking about my process. What I mean is, how do I arrive at my decisions for what to finally end up creating? What impacts that decision more: my time frame or my creative satiation? Am I impulsive or careful? (the questions stretch onward)

But looking back on it, I've generally gone with my first "good idea" on all of them. I sit and think about the project for a couple minutes and then have one good idea and think, yeah, that's a good one. But here I stop myself from just going with it: I tell myself to stop and explore other ideas in the name of true creativity (because we all know our first impulse is not actually our best idea). But secretly, I'm telling myself that I'm really just going to end up doing my first idea and that I'm only thinking of these other ones to satisfy some unseen creative taskmaster. I'll leave this alone now because I guess what I'm more interested in is that decision time when I've chosen the one idea I'll do from the infinite universe of ideas there are.

I wish I thought with more outright creativity, I think. Because I don't let the problem sit for too long in my head before choosing an idea (usually out of the necessity of just having to pick something), I wish the time I do spend ruminating over solutions was more rich. I don't know what I'm asking myself for, really. I just always wonder, "where did that come from?" when I think of a good idea, or "how did I think of that?". You know? What connections did my head put together, what pieces of knowledge and experience were fitted together into the tiny amalgam of mental substance that is an idea? I wish I could record it somehow...but that's rather impossible. It kind of makes you crazy a bit when you wonder about how people have ideas at all, how they know that their idea is the one that really solves the problem. Almost like when you look at a word too long and you take it apart and suddenly it looks alien to you. When you stop and "look" at how you think, it comes to make no sense at all!

So then I haven't answered any of my questions and you have become thoroughly confused because you probably just got done deconstructing some word from my last paragraph. So then that leaves me still wondering, I guess. But I still like my ideas most of the time. I can continue pondering my process in my spare time.