Stuck with a problem? Here's why brainstorming can help

When done properly, brainstorming can be highly effective so here are four principles and benefits

We all have those moments in life when our minds become overwhelmed, cluttered with too many thoughts, and it can be difficult to navigate. Brainstorming is a technique that can help us do this effectively.

There are many benefits to brainstorming, and some principles to follow during the process. As a writer, my mind is a crazy maze of ideas that I often get lost in; brainstorming is something I use with my beta reader to express my thoughts and "piggy-back" ideas off each other.

I find it incredibly helpful, and so I wanted to share some of the principles of the technique and benefits.

Principles of brainstorming:

• Crazy is welcome – thinking outside the box and generating crazy suggestions can open new doors to more solutions and create new ideas.

• Quantity over quality – brainstorming is all about what comes to mind; don’t force out ideas because they aren’t “good quality” or logical enough. Get as many ideas/solutions/words down as you can and the quantity will breed quality overtime.

• Mess is key – when it comes to brainstorming you’re allowed to be messy and frantic. Your notes aren’t supposed to be neat and refined; you want to jot down ideas as they come to you without wasting time on making sure your handwriting is tidy or that all your grammar is correct. But do remember they need to be legible and comprehensible to you.

• Don’t criticise – as ideas come to you, don’t criticise them; all ideas should be welcome during the process of brainstorming, so keep any criticism for the end to avoid hindering the generating of new ideas.

Benefits of brainstorming:

• Declutters the mind – when your mind is overwhelmed with thoughts and ideas, jotting them down and brainstorming off them, can ease your mind and help you think more clearly as the ideas are written on a page – they’re no longer just floating around in your head.

• Combined creativity – group brainstorming can be very effective in generating lots of new ideas that you may not have thought of on your own. It allows for you to bounce off one another, quickening the process of creation.

• Generates a large number of ideas – brainstorming helps you come up with a large number of ideas so that you have lots of different options, but it also allows you to generate these ideas quickly.

• Combination of ideas – when brainstorming, everyone can generate ideas and whilst they may not be effective separately, they may be the perfect solution together. Brainstorming can help you combine ideas to find a better answer that you may not have come to on your own.

Brainstorming is a great technique to generate ideas and expand creativity, so if you are stuck on finding a solution to a problem, or just need lots of ideas for a project, use this technique to help.

Until next time…