Another guest post from the esteemed writer Athena’s Quill. if you are struggling to come up with ideas for any projects going on in your life – this is for you.

“Ideation.”

That’s a new word (and by that I mean it’s fewer than 200 years old). I’ll spare you the dictionary definition because it’s just what it sounds like: getting/making/finding ideas.

We all want good ideas, lots and lots of them. (If we had more good ideas, we would want money a lot less, for sure…) I pick up tips everywhere I can in order to generate good ideas, and so far I have a few favorites. So, in order to get more good ideas for your daily routine, your creative project, or your puzzling problems, run your topic through this list of idea sparkers and get some good stuff going.

First of all: Before you come up with good ideas, you need to come up with ideas. Those of you who feel like your ideas are usually lame and bad: the following is a tip I love almost as much as my little brother.

1. Pick a number between ten and twenty.
2. Make that many bullet dots on a page.
3. Resolve not to give up or get up until you have an idea for every dot, even down to “Rob a bank in my pajamas in broad daylight with a squirt gun.”

Okay, while you will laugh at some of these things, what you now have before you is a really great thing: a list of lots of ideas! Some of them are going to be pretty workable, and some just need tiny tweaks before they could be usable too. And those weird ones? They’ve helped you already. As you’ve been generating weird stuff to get all the blanks filled in, you have been thinking creatively, forcing your brain to make unusual connections. Doing this primes you for even more generative thinking in the next few days. Although it might seem strange at first, know that I use this method of quota idea generating successfully for things like new menu ideas, writing topics, where to go and what to do on the weekend…just about everything!

Another thing I like to do is use “all the brains I can borrow” like Woodrow Wilson said he did. When I’m puzzling something out and looking for new ideas, I send a text message out to everyone I’m on speaking terms with (or I actually call them, if they are older than I am). In this way Other People do the thinking for me and then I get to sit back, selecting and rejecting as I like, chuckling with the feeling of great power. Seriously, though, this is an important thing to do to for ideas because we need to get out of our own heads when we’re stuck. Other minds help us do that. And even if none of the suggestions you get actually work out, your mind will at least be nudged in new directions and will get you moving closer towards a workable idea.

Writers–you’ll get my next piece of advice write away: to get some fantastic ideas for your project, draft right now, as quickly as possible. All you other kinds of artists and idea hunters—do exactly the same thing with your work and/or problems. Whatever your project: sketch a preliminary mock-up, jot down the first notes of a song you’ve been thinking of, make a preliminary to-do list, right after you finish reading this. Whatever it is you’re planning to do, get it out of your head right now. It might seem embarrassing, what you have just produced, but this is the part where you get to make the magic happen. With this draft, you now have time to let it sit by itself for awhile. While it’s sitting around, your mind has now turned into a conduit for amazing ideas for this project: what to do to make it better, great things to add on, things you can cut, how you can present something more clearly…You will be absolutely amazed at the great ideas that come to you only when you have made a first draft your creation. Where were they when you began to write/paint/compose? I don’t know, but draft quickly to get amazing ideas to come to you quickly. [Blogger’s Note: This method has helped me more times than I can count.]

For great ideas for going projects, have yourself do a tiny bit of the above every day. Draft a sentence, sketch a detail, add an idea to a recipe, to your project every day. In a week you will be surprised and thrilled with what you have accomplished, and again, you will become and idea magnet for you art.

Beyond the obvious one–“Does this project need to be done at all?”–it’s important to challenge assumptions to generate good ideas for your problems and projects. Think of what you’re currently looking for ideas for, and ask these questions about it out loud to yourself, “Do I need to do it a certain way, at a certain time, in a certain place? Does it have to be a certain size, length, color? Can I do it for free? Can somebody else do some of it?” Examine other assumptions you may have made. (By the way, the false assumptions can often be found under the parts of the problem or project that make you groan or dread it.) Bust them wide open, and better ideas for things will occur to you.

All of the above are ways I figure out what to write blog posts about, including this one right here. I promise you these tips really work. I hope you will give them a try and see if they work as well for you. Your life is your greatest project, and good ideas will make it a more fun adventure. Good luck generating ideas, and congratulations in advance!