Monday, March 19, 2007

Using Brainstorming to Tackle a Problem

Whenever there is a large issue or problem that needs to be dealt with, few things can work as well as a brainstorming session in order to come up with the solution. If you are able to efficiently gather your thoughts for a while and focus on the question at hand, then you will be able to solve the problem quickly and with much less mental stress than usual. The key to brainstorming is to create the perfect environment, both physical and mental, for you to think as hard as possible. So if you need to do some brainstorming, follow some of these guidelines and you will be able to maximize your efforts.

First, you should completely remove any surrounding things which may distract you from the task at hand. Completely isolate yourself from the outside world. When you are brainstorming, you need to be completely alone with your thoughts, and possibly a piece of paper and a pencil to record them as they come to you. So don’t turn on music because you think it helps your brain speed up. The best thing you could do is sit in a completely quiet room with your eyes closed, and think very hard about the issue at hand.

Once you are in the ideal conditions, ideas will start to come to you extremely quickly. The process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of meditation until you start to think of ideas. Once things start to come to you, write them down on the piece of paper that you bring along with you. Write down everything you think of. When you are brainstorming, there is no answer that should be thought of as too dumb to write down. Once you are done with the session of brainstorming, you can start to cross things off your list. But until then, you can’t be selective in your thoughts, as it will get in the way of your other thoughts.

Once you are done with the brainstorming session, you hopefully have a nice little list of things that you have thought of. If you don’t, then don’t worry. A big problem requires lots of effort to solve, and you could spend many hours brainstorming before you figure out what you will do.

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