Ideas are like bubbles. They vanish as quickly as they form. You got to build mechanisms to capture them.

Over time, I have tried several idea generations and collection processes. Although I keep switching from one to another, I would like to share them with you here.

1. Write Ten Ideas A Day

My first real system to generate ideas came from James Altucher’s article, Ultimate Guide to Becoming an Idea Machine, where he recommends generating ten ideas a day in two minutes.

Although he is talking about generating business ideas, I used his technique to come up with topics to write about.

I had assigned a separate notebook to it.

I would sit with a pen and paper and write down the heading in two minutes. Without evaluating them or thinking about how I was going to write them, whether or not I knew enough about the topic or not.

Coming up with five or six headlines was easy. Then they will become hard. The last two to three were the hardest. But since the clock was ticking, I would keep going.

This exercise really helped me to flex my idea muscles. I did it, on and off, for many months in the early years of my writing career. Not all the headings I generated made it to publication. Some did; others stayed in my Medium draft folder. Over time, I could use some of them as short LinkedIn posts. Recently I deleted 100+ half-written articles I was no longer interested in writing about.

If you want to learn more about the process, you can get James and Claudia Azula Altucher’s book Become An Idea Machine.

“The way to have good ideas is to get close to killing yourself. It’s like weightlifting. When you lift slightly more than you can handle, you get stronger. In life, when the gun is to your head, you either figure it out, or you die.”
― Claudia Azula Altucher, Become An Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are The Currency Of The 21st Century

Alternatively, you can watch this two-minute video and get the gist of it.

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FQ74hqCt5a8g%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQ74hqCt5a8g&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FQ74hqCt5a8g%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

Mind mapping To Go Deep Into A Topic.

My next technique was to mind map or brainstorm on a single topic in order to get deep into it.

I would either a topic I know a lot about or one I want to learn about so that I can research it and write about it.

To demonstrate that, I have picked a broad topic of storytelling. I have put ‘storytelling’ in the middle and wrote ten sub-topics that came to mind about storytelling.

Then I picked two sub-topics and went one level deep by writing ten sub-sub topics.

I just wrote one word for sub-topics and sub-sub-topics. No need to go into detail at this point. You can write a couple of words if it makes more sense, but no more than that.

Then I picked two more sub-topics and wrote ten sub-sub-topics for each one of them.

At the end of this exercise, I had 100 sub-sub-topics to write about on the broad topic of ‘storytelling.’

Then I wrote three sub-sub-sub-topics in each sub-category. Now I can go into a bit of detail and write headings. I would use Headline Generator, which gives 700 titles for a single keyword.

For example, for storytelling –>mistakes, I got the following headings which I tweaked to my liking.

• 13 Storytelling Mistakes Avoid
• What Can You Learn From Common StoryTelling Mistakes
• Why Mistakes Are An Opportunity To Tell Stories Differently

Now I can write something concrete and useful for a broad ‘storytelling’ topic.

Using this technique, you can come up with 300 headings to write about. And all uniquely generated by you.

Do this exercise for your topic, and you will never run out of topics.

Tip: Don’t take more than two minutes to write ten sub-topics. Then, each day, pick up three sub-topics and write ten sub-sub-topics. Keep going till you get to 300 subtopics.

Personal Experiences Idea Generator

This is my third tool for generating ideas.

It has three steps:

1. The Two-Year Test
2. Adding specificity
3. Use the 4A Framework + proven approaches to generate ideas

Step 1: The Two-Year Test

In the first step, I ask myself one simple question:

“What are the problems I’ve solved and topics I’ve learned about over the past two years.”

Then I do a brain dump of all the things I have done, the problems I have solved, or things I have learned.

Since everything won’t come to me in a single session, so I have the list going all the time, and as soon as I remember something or learn something new, I add it to the list.

This is a particularly good way because then I can write from my experiences like I am writing now in this idea-generation article.

Even though I am not an expert on a topic, I can write about my experiences.

I have also found that people rarely want to learn from experts; they prefer to learn from those who are just a few steps ahead of them on the same path.

Once I have the list going, I organise the topics into buckets, such as:

• Writing
• Productivity
• Marketing
• LinkedIn
• Authorpreneurship
• Fiction writing

Step 2: Adding specificity

Once I pick a topic that I learned in the past two years or a problem I have solved, I would use that to explain it to a specific audience. That audience could be me, two years ago, or a reader who has yet to learn that topic.

This is very important because now I am giving specific advice to a specific person. Which makes the article more useful for the readers and also brings credibility to me.

Some of my articles below, written from personal experience, were well received because they talk directly to the readers.

How I am Using LinkedIn To Establish Myself As A Writer

How To Write A Good Short Form Article

4 Types Of Articles That Work Well On Medium

Use Lego Block Technique To Help You Write Faster

How To Get Started On LinkedIn

How To Write A Good LinkedIn Post

How To Set Up A Good LinkedIn Profile

How To Write An Article In An Hour

There are other ways to get specific. Here are some levers you can pull:

• By industry (LinkedIn for writers)
• By demographic (LinkedIn for middle-aged writers)
• By physical location (LinkedIn for Indian Writers)
• By digital platform (Writing for Twitter)
• By price (Productivity tools for free)
• By distribution (Marketing to Libraries)
• By problem (Writing during driving)

You see, each of these examples is very specific and hence makes much better articles.

Now you’ve got your topics, here’s where it gets fun.

Step 3: Use the 4A Framework to write headlines

I learned this framework recently from Dickie Bush of Ship 30 for 30.

4A Framework is about expressing your topic in 4 ways

• Actionable (here’s how)
• Analytical (here are the numbers)
• Aspirational (yes, you can)
• Anthropological (here’s why)

Actionable

These are actionable, implementable pieces of content.

The reader should gain some new insight or instruction they didn’t have beforehand.

• Tips
• Hacks
• Resources
• Ultimate guides

Take your core idea and help the reader put it into practice.

Analytical

These are breakdowns involving numbers, frameworks, and processes.

Take your core idea and support it with numbers and analysis.

• Industry trends
• Surprising numbers
• Why your idea works

Help the reader unlock a new way of thinking.

Aspirational

These are stories of how you or others put your core idea into practice.

• Lessons
• Mistakes
• Reflections
• Underrated traits
• How to get started

Help the reader understand the benefits they unlock when they see the world through this new lens.

Anthropological

These are things that speak to universal human nature.

• Fears
• Failures
• Struggles
• Why others are wrong
• How you’ve been misled

Address these, and you will have an interesting read.

For example, if my topic is “Building a daily writing habit as a beginner writer” here are four ways to write articles about it.

• 7 mistakes to avoid when building a daily writing habit (actionable)
• Why writing for 30 days is the key to building a writing habit (analytical)
• 3 lessons I learned from writing for 100 days in a row (aspirational)
• The #1 reason people stop writing shortly after starting (anthropological)

Please keep in mind that so far, this is the idea generation phase. You got to refrain from writing the article. You are collecting and curating the headlines only.

How to develop them into articles is a different subject altogether. Let me know if you want me to write about it.