Changing Your Environment To Get Ideas Flowing

As a startup founder, it can be easy to get stuck in the daily grind, leaving you struggling for new ideas. As a business owner myself, I completely understand – I often have huge brain blocks!

Changing your environment is one of the best ways to get the ideas flowing. It doesn’t have to be a big change. You just need to shake things up a bit to refresh your mindset.

💡 Step away from the screen and write or draw your ideas – using paper and pens can be enough of a change to start getting those thoughts flowing (I love an A3 pad and Sharpies, or a bullet journal).

💡 Take a walk or run – being outside can help clear the cobwebs, and some people think better on the move.

💡 Use your voice – I like to dictate ideas on my phone at random places. You can either get speech-to-text software, or what I like to do is just record my voice and use Otter.ai to transcribe it.

💡 Find an ideas buddy. You’ll not be the only one struggling to think clearly, see if there are any other people in your network that want to have a call and work through ideas together, talking thoughts through is a great way to get your head straight.

💡 Join a community. I have some wonderful communities that keep my ideas fresh, such as Mark Schaefer‘s RISE Discord group, which helps me work through future marketing trends, new tech, and personal branding.

In a 2019 study conducted at The University of California, 98 professional writers and 87 physicists recorded their most creative idea each day, as well as what they were doing when the thought struck them.

While most of the ideas happened at work, 20% of their most meaningful ideas came while doing something else – tasks like washing dishes or taking a shower. Interestingly, many of the ideas that hit during these outside work times were much more profound.

Apparently, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The Social Network) takes six to eight showers a day to get over writer’s block. It must cost him a fortune in Radox 🚿