Brainstorming has always been one of my strong points – something I’ve always been exceptionally great at. Since people are always looking for ways to brainstorm easier/better/more productive, I decided to share what works for me with you. Rather than describe ways to create a better quality brainstorm – that’s for another post! – I want to share with you five ways that I’ve found to make brainstorming easier. As a result, I now look at brainstorming as a more enjoyable process, even though I love it already!

1. Move around!

Closed positions = a closed mind. Open positions = an open mind.

When you imagine a person deep in brainstorming, you often think of somebody sitting on a couch, notebook in one hand and pencil in the other, blankly staring off into space. Maybe you imagined yourself in that same position! That is the worst positions your body can be in while you’re striving to be creative.

A closed position leads to a closed mind. If you’re sitting in a position that’s painful, often times you’ll become hurt and impatient. Impatience leads to thinking “Why am I doing this?”, which leads to procrastination and unproductive brainstorming. If you’re leisurely lounging on your couch, you start to feel tired and bored; this too leads to disastrous ends results.  If you’re having trouble creating new ideas, try standing up. Move around the room – imagine you’re talking to a classroom full of students, and you have to come up with an interesting presentation about your current ideas. Pace briskly around the room, use hand motions as you’re thinking, look excited and enthralled! Nobody is watching you, so put on your acting face!

Think of how you act when you chat on the phone to your best friend, telling them something exciting that’s just happened in your life. You appear thrilled and glowing, you begin to use extravagant hand motions to emphasize your thoughts. You giggle, smile, and literally act like the person is standing right across from you. Even though you can’t physically see your friend, your actions show that your mind is actively working to retrieve the memories you’re trying to relay to them. Try to jump-start your brain by physically getting excited if you’re having trouble brainstorming.

2. Think to yourself out loud.

When we’re actively engaging in brainstorming, it’s easy to only write down our ideas without questioning how that idea came to be. As a result, after the first few ideas we begin to think in a closed-minded pattern – this can lead many people to encounter a form of writer’s block. Obviously this can’t be a good thing – for example, if you’re striving for 50 ways to create passive income on your blog and you can only think of 10 ways, you’re coming up just a bit short.

Thinking out loud helps break those closed-minded patterns. Instead of creating ideas out of thin air solely in your mind, you’re forcing yourself to justify your own reasons to yourself. Doing this allows you to make new connections with old and new concepts, which then leads to a richer, more productive brainstorming session.

3. Hold an object in your hand.

Have you ever played with a Rubik’s cube before? Most people have! They’re a bit addicting, aren’t they? You begin to shuffle around the colors, trying your hardest to solve the puzzle. After a while your mind begins to wander and think of what’s for dinner, what you’re doing tomorrow night… and the problem you’ve been having at work.

Human beings are very tactile-oriented creatures. We love to play with things – even as kids we often played around with creative, colorful toys, touching everything and getting a sense of the world around us. As adults we tried to put this part of us back into a box, and unfortunately our creativity also was stored away. Next time you’re having difficulty brainstorming, try playing with something in your hands as you think: a squishy stress ball, a mechanical pencil, a metal chain. It might be enough to stimulate your imagination.

4. Get a friend to objectively question your thought patterns.

Even after brainstorming out loud, sometimes we still can’t smash our thought patterns. Asking somebody else to objectively look at your brainstormed list and ask you how you created your ideas will force you to justify your reasons to them. Once you begin to see an underlying pattern, you can then inject a bit of reasoning and emotion into your thoughts and come up with new, brilliant solutions to your problems.

For example, suppose you’re coming up with new ideas on how to decorate your front lawn, but all of your landscaping ideas include adding in more flowers. You don’t see this blind spot – flower adder! – because you’re too entrenched in the belief that to have a decorated lawn, you must add flowers. Asking your best friend to look over your answers and ask, “Why does every idea include flowers? This is ridiculous!” can lead to a better brainstorming run.

5. Start brainstorming a completely different problem.

“Brainstorming block” is identical to writer’s block. It’s annoying and hardly fun to strive to create new ideas and not be able to come up with anything.  Sometimes the best way to become a better brainstormer is to simply try brainstorming solutions to a brand new problem. Doing this allows you to start making new connections with a totally different concepts. Those connections may allow you to better brainstorm on your original problem.

What are your personal suggestions?

Brainstorming, to me, is all about creating new, creative connections with concepts and ideas you already know. What methods do you use to make brainstorming more productive and easier? Don’t be shy – share them in the comments. Let’s help each other become even better at this valuable skill.