How to Never Run Out Of Things to Write About (So That You Can Stop Feeling Stuck)

This week I published my 900th article on Medium.

My routine has always been (pretty much) the same. It’s nothing wild and ambitious. In actual fact, it’s quite underwhelming. It goes like this:

• Wake up
• Grab a coffee
• Write

One question I seem to get more often than not is ‘how do you come up with ideas’. Now this topic is close to my heart because coming up with ideas is what I do for a day job. Here's how I do it.

Listen to the world around you

The first place many of my ideas come from is my environment, specifically the physical environment. There are clues all around in the physical world of how to live better in your head.

If you want to find the best ways of doing things, nature provides incredible clues. Recently I wrote a piece about the Mind Garden.

It’s a concept that connects the natural world with the mental world. Clues are everywhere if you choose to look.

The easiest way to find ideas

Social media is just a bunch of ideas expressed in different ways. Here’s the easiest (and fastest) way to come up with new ideas:

• Scroll through social media
• Stop every time you find yourself disagreeing
• Grab a notepad and write down what you think instead

It doesn’t have to be perfect it just needs to be an opinion, that’s enough of a starting point to get going.

Sewing ideas together

One of the easiest ways to grab ideas is to sew two old ideas together (I talk about this in the Medium BP). The best way to do this is to collect ideas you see in the world. You’ll see them all over once you start looking.

• Consistency is the secret
• Building in public is the secret

But you can stitch those two ideas together.

• Building in public leads to consistency

The devil’s advocate

One of my favourite ways to come up with ideas is to counter established ideas in the world of self-help, development and business. I see something in the world and I think ‘how could that not be the case?’

It’s easy to find well-established ideas:

• Luck plays a role in talent
• Hard work beats success
• Most people hate their jobs

Take each idea and question it. Is that really the case? What else might be at play? How are we able to agree that it’s true?

Talk through your ideas

Often it’s much easier to talk through your idea than it is to write them down. I don’t know why it’s the case. I find myself talking to myself in the car, on a dog walk, and making coffee.

All ideas are easier to stress-test once they are spoken.

There is something about hearing your own ideas back that help you identify the holes in your argument. And a good way to find holes is to pick at the idea.

Some of my best articles are those that are scratched a little deeper after talking out loud to myself (honestly I’m fine I promise).

As you experience the world

The best way to capture ideas to write about is to experience the world. In your day job, in your hobbies, the people you meet the places you go.

Life is happening all around you.

All your experiences are shaping your view of the world, race through your past experience and shine a light on any of your interesting stories. Figure out why they are interesting and tell the world.

Or better, relive the experience and figure out what you’d do differently and why.

Writing is a way to tell the world the way you think it should be.

In a nutshell

Ways to come up with new ideas exist everywhere. It’s my favourite hobby to collect new ways of coming up with ideas.

But I’ll tell you the most effective way to come up with ideas: find a topic you can’t shut up about. Keep talking about it until you are blue in the face.

But don’t just keep thinking, start to explore how you think (not just what you think) you’ll notice an interesting shift happens. You realise the mind’s incredible ability to come up with new ways of looking at the world.

It’s honestly such fun.

Never stop exploring. Keep quizzing, questioning, developing and falling in love with the process of coming up with new ideas. Every now and then you’ll stumble upon a new idea that you can’t stop thinking about.

That’s what happened to me and I created a whole business around it.