10 Ideas for Generating Ideas
Everybody needs help coming up with good ideas sometime. It doesn’t matter if you are a writer, content creator, strategist, entrepreneur or a parent. You’re going to need to generate ideas and there’s going to be some times when the ideas just aren’t flowing.
I’m going to share with you 10 ways I’ve used to generate ideas over the years I’ve been working as a writer, creative director and strategist. Some of them are a little more specific to writing or creating, some are more general – but the basic principals can apply to just about any kind of idea generation you might be facing.
So, if you get stuck or just want to try a new methodology, try one of these:
1. Creation Percolation
There is something to the old cliche about great ideas coming to you in the shower. Often, if you’ve been working on something for a while and you’re stuck, or even if you’re not sure where to begin, taking a break and doing something else while the ideas percolate in your brain is a good way to let those ideas bubble up to the surface.
Over the years, I’ve found taking a 20 – 40 minute walk while listening to music or a podcast really works. It is not unusual to see me come in from a walk and rush to the computer to put my ideas down before the can escape. In fact most of the ideas for posts on this blog came about that way – including this one, along with five of the 10 ideas for creating ideas.
2. Don’t Cha Stop, Don’t Cha Stop, Don’t Cha Stop, Don’t Cha Stop
Another brain-loosing exercise I’ve used to good effect is a forced writing method. Set your timer for five or ten minutes and then force yourself to write nonstop until the timer goes off. Even if you’re just writing/typing “I don’t know what to say” – don’t cha stop! (to quote The Cars, from their best album ever) Try to force yourself to write about the subject at hand as much as you can – but whatever you do, just keep writing.
Granted, you will probably have a bunch of crap. But what happens as you’re writing in a pretty much stream-of-conscience mode, is that some seeds of good ideas fall out of your sub-conscience along the way.
When your time is up, set it aside for a few minutes and then come back to it. What seeds of ideas do you find there that can be nurtured to grow into full blown good ideas. Usually there will be a few of them. They are not fully formed, you’ll have to kind of work them out. But you will find some ideas that wouldn’t have come to you just staring at a blank screen.
3. Do the Expected, One Better
Back at the beginning of my time at Yaffe, we had the Michigan Lottery account. It was a fun account in that they usually did creative TV ads with a decent production budget. All the creative teams would work on pitches for each project. During those years, ideas from my art director partner and I probably won at least half of those creative shootouts. Sure, we were the most senior team. But, our real secret was we were the only ones who would take on the client’s idea.
Usually, there was a basic idea from the client on what they’d like to see. Most of the creative teams would ignore it – it came from the client, therefore it sucks. We would take it as the jumping off point. We’d approach it as “okay, they’d like to see something along these lines – how can we take that idea and make it better or move it in a more creative direction?” We didn’t just do the idea, we did it one better. Since we were usually the only team to attack that idea, it pretty much always assured we’d have at least one idea go to the client meeting.
How this relates to your own idea creation is this. You might have a client who has an idea. Or there might just be the most expected path to an idea – the one that is the path most taken. Usually, that’s for a reason – it works reasonably well, even though it’s cliche or tried and true. Or it is the easiest path to take. That doesn’t really matter – use it as your jumping off point. Don’t just do the same old idea, but figure out how you can approach it from a different angle or how to add some unexpected layers or twists to it.
4. One Word to Rule Them All
This is a simple and fun way to get your brain moving in a new direction. The idea is to take one random word and write something using it. There are a number of different ways to get your word. You can close your eyes, open up a dictionary to a random page and put your finger down – wherever it lands is your word. Or you can open up a Google search and type in a couple random letters and see what word it auto-fills in. Or ask a friend, colleague or family member to just give you a random word.
Once you have your word, use it as the jumping off point and write something using the word – preferably about whatever project you need an idea for. But, if not, just write some random paragraph or two using the word and see where it takes you.
5. Easy as ABT
Another way to work out an idea is to take whatever story you’re trying to tell and put it into an ABT story structure. ABT is About, But and Therefore. Start with a time and place… And this is what the situation was. But there was this problem, issue, crisis that came up. Therefore, this is what was needed to solve it. The idea is you can reduce the narrative down to once sentence using those three connector words. In telling your story, then you can blow out that narrative to give the story a lot more detail. Creating your ABT structure can help you align your thoughts and new ideas can flow out of it.
6. Playing with POV
Another way to generate ideas is to look at it from different points of view. If you’re trying to sell a product – how would a salesperson look at it? How would the customer? How would a worker who helps build it? What would a person who doesn’t need it think? How would a competing product look at it? What about a child or alien who knows nothing about it? Look at it from all different angles and see what ideas come to mind.
You can do the same thing for creating a strategy or business plan. How many different points of view can you imagine? What would they do or think about what you’re doing?
7. Oh the Thinks You Can Think
Start with the most outrageous, ridiculous idea you can think of. Push it to the limits – what crazy idea would never get past the client or the customer or would never fit in your budget? What might not even be feasible in any way, shape or form? Use that as your starting point.
Now, start to scale it back a little at a time. If you can’t do this incredible idea, what can you do that gets close to it? When you start by removing all shackles and roadblocks to your idea, you can go places you never would have thought of otherwise. Working backwards from there to what could work will put you in a different head space.
8. Go on a Surfin’ Safari
Another method that frequently works for me is to surf the internet. This could be just to do some research on the product or issue I’m dealing with. Or to see what other people have done trying to solve the same or similar issues. Or it can just be looking at tangential items to the one I’m wrestling with.
This is not to steal or adapt someone else’s idea, but to feed your brain new information and see how others have processed it. This often takes my thinking in a new direction that I hadn’t thought of before. Also, surfing can act as a bit of creation peculation time as outlined in #1 on this list.
9. Visit Bizarro World
In the Superman universe there was Bizarro World, where everything was the opposite of our (well, DC’s, anyway) world. You can do that with your creative problem – attack it from the opposite point of view. Come up with ideas that are support the exact opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish. Once you’re done that, what ideas does that trigger for solving your current issue? What is the opposite approach from your opposite approach?
10. Make Lists of 10
This is another method I particularly like. Create lists of ten things related to your idea. If you’re trying to build a character in a story – list the 10 first things they do each morning or 10 things they learned their first week on the job. Or 10 life moments that lead them to be the person they are now.
If you’re trying to sell a product, list 10 uses it’s not intended for or 10 people who would want it more than anyone. What are 10 blog headlines you could write about your idea? 10 things that could go wrong? 10 of the weirdest places you’d find it?
You get the idea – think of some unusual or even mundane question regarding the object of your ideas and make a list of 10.
Now it’s your turn
That’s my list of 10 ideas to get ideas. What ideas have worked for you? Which of the ones I listed have you used and how did it work for you? I’d love to hear from you.
Mike McClure, still peculating new ideas
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