Brainstorming and brainwriting
Two simple ways to generate more ideas.
How do you get past the obvious ideas? Use techniques that give your ideas room to grow and evolve.
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Brainwriting and brainstorming are both ways to generate lots of ideas. With brainwriting, you work on your own, giving yourself space to generate ideas fully, ideas you can use later on your own or with others. Brainstorming happens with a small group, where everyone brings a unique perspective, and interacting with others often sparks ideas you might never come up with alone. Each method has its strengths. Brainwriting helps keep early judgment from shutting down your creativity, while brainstorming makes the most of collaboration and unexpected connections.
Begin each session with a clear question to focus your ideas. This focus question sets the direction and ensures the ideas generated are relevant. A well-crafted question is open-ended, specific enough to provide guidance, and framed to encourage creativity. In the context of life design, this is often called a design question, for example, “How can I exercise enough and eat healthy every day?” In the context of creating solutions to work or project challenges, it is often called a problem-solving question, for example, “How can we make our team meetings more productive?”
The rules for brainwriting and brainstorming are:
👉 Don’t censor or judge. Welcome all ideas. Focus on generating them now, and leave evaluation or refinement for later.
👉 Go for quantity over quality. The more ideas you produce, the higher the chance of finding solutions that help you reach your goal. Set a minimum, for example 50 or 100 ideas.
👉 Set a time limit for the session to maintain momentum and avoid overthinking.
👉 Go for wild, crazy ideas. Push beyond the limits of your usual thinking. Pretend anything is possible, like you have magical powers.
👉 Build on others’ ideas when brainstorming. Working off others’ thoughts often sparks ideas you wouldn’t have come up with on your own.
👉 Iterate in multiple rounds. You can repeat idea-generation sessions to refine, expand, and combine ideas for better results, but even a single round can be valuable.
⚒️ Brainwriting
Use the rules above as a guide and follow the steps below to run an effective brainwriting session and generate a wide range of ideas.
👉 Get a pen and plenty of cards or sticky notes, or open an electronic document.
👉 Keep your focus question in mind, the question you are generating ideas for.
👉 Generate ideas quickly to avoid judgment, and write down every idea that comes to mind. Make sure each idea is visible and organized (one idea per card, sticky note, or line in a document) so you can review and build on them later.
👉 After each idea, ask yourself, “And what else?”
👉 Continue until you reach at least the minimum number of ideas you set.
👉 Share ideas after the session if you want. Even though brainwriting is done individually, sharing can spark further discussion or feed into a brainstorming session.
⚒️ Brainstorming
Use the rules above as a guide and follow the steps below to run an effective brainstorming session and generate a wide range of ideas.
👉 Appoint a facilitator to prepare and lead the session. They ensure there are enough pens and cards or sticky notes for everyone and encourage all participants to contribute, making sure everyone has a chance to share ideas.
👉 Remind participants of the focus question at the start.
👉 Participants take turns sharing ideas out loud and writing them down. Make sure each idea is visible and organized so everyone can see and build on them.
👉 Build on others’ ideas. Use the collective creativity of the group to generate ideas that no one could come up with alone.
👉 At the end, the facilitator counts the ideas produced and shares the total with the group.
⚒️ Group similar ideas
You now have a large collection of ideas, whether stored electronically, on sticky notes, or on cards. Many ideas will be similar, overlap, or relate to one another. Grouping ideas helps you see patterns, spot new possibilities, and focus on the themes most likely to help you achieve your focus goal.
Group similar ideas into themes and give each theme a short description that captures its essence. Place ideas that don’t fit any theme in an “Other” category. As you generate new ideas, add them to the appropriate theme. Organizing ideas this way gives you a clear set of themes and associated ideas that are easier to review and act on.
A simple example:
👉 Focus question: How can I improve my daily health habits?
👉 Generated ideas: Take a walk every morning, go to the gym three times a week, do yoga or stretching in the evening, drink more water throughout the day, meal prep healthy lunches
👉 Themes: Exercise Habits: includes the first three ideas, Nutrition & Hydration: includes the last two ideas.
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Brainwriting and brainstorming help you move past the obvious ideas and organize your ideas into themes, revealing patterns and new possibilities.
