Be Less Zombie

24The ‘Five-Day Brainstorm’

Want better ideas? Stop rushing.

Too often we limit the creative process to the length of a one-off brainstorm. But our brains like to keep munching on problems and processing ideas in the background.

If we're smart about synchronising our creativity with the idea incubation process, we can develop better ideas, simply by returning to them a few days or even hours later.

Think of it as a continuous improvement approach to brainstorming.

So next time you need ideas, instead of stopping the creative process at the end of the brainstorm, try the ‘Five-Day Brainstorm’ approach:

1. Write a short description of the five most promising ideas that emerged during the brainstorm session.
2. Take a picture of each idea description.

   

   © Elvin Turner.

3. Schedule a follow-up meeting in five days.
4. At the start of each of those days, email your team one of the five ideas. Encourage them to munch on that idea during the day: poke it, daydream about it, talk about it, break off parts of it, and add new ones. At 5 p.m., everyone shares by email any thoughts that have emerged for them.
5. Reconvene in five days and take turns to share what emerged and reconfigure ideas accordingly.

Try it out and tweak the process to make it work better for your team in your context.

Great ideas tend to emerge over time. This is especially true when working on more complex problems. So don't ...