Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content

Try This: Make a list of five common jargon words in your industry, and open up each for five minutes.

How were fan bases built for ideas and initiatives in other fields, such as politics, music, philosophy, medicine, manufacturing, engineering,

If I wanted to make a big mistake here, what would I do? • What data do I need that I don’t yet have? • How can I better use the data I already have? • How would I describe the situation to the CEO? • How would I describe it to my mother? • How would I describe it to my most supportive friend? • How would I describe it to a disinterested stranger?

Try This: Write for ten minutes about a situation that physically and mentally exhausts you. Don’t try to solve anything in this bout of writing; just get the details down.

“Go with the thought. Agree with what you just wrote, and logically extend it.… Be whimsical if you like, but make sure the whimsy naturally follows what preceded it.… Based on this new thought that just appeared on the page, what might happen next?”

How then would you use concept substitution in your freewriting? Use the page to ask and answer these four questions: 1. What problem am I trying to solve? (Be general in your wording here. Nothing too specific. Examples of good general problem statements: “How do I build a fan base for something unknown?” “How do I sell a product to a market that

Your best thought comes embedded in chunks of your worst thought.

Focus-changers are simple questions to ask yourself, in writing, that help you redirect your mind toward the unexplored parts of a situation.

Try This: Contact a friend or colleague today, and ask them if you can send them a document that contains your raw thinking on a problem that’s bothering you. When they agree, take a day or two to assemble a talking document, and fire it off.