Out of Ideas? Use This 3-Step Process to Refill Your Noggin…

Photo by Frederick Medina on Unsplash

Do you ever feel like you're out of ideas?

I know your frustration.

You think and think and think, but you're just drawing blanks. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for an idea, but you can’t even get a scrap. 

I've had this experience happen to me 4 times within the past month and a half.

But I've been able to overcome this drought of ideas each time. And so can you. 

Here's how I've overcome this drought:

Step 1: Change your mindset

Saying you're out of ideas makes a temporary problem sound like a permanent one. This is known as having a fixed mindset. Fixed mindsets make growth impossible. 

Not good.

Instead, tell yourself, "I don't have any ideas coming to my mind right now."

This allows you the flexibility to change. You can gain ideas in the future, but you don’t have any ideas right now. So, you need to find ways to get new ideas.

This simple shift may seem silly, but it's powerful. Reframing your thoughts is an effective way to reduce the self-imposed shackles your brain imprisons you with.

Don't discount the power of reframing your mindset.

Step 2: Write about your experience

This is where the drought of ideas ends.

If you're out of ideas, you can always write about the fact that you're out of ideas.

Boom! You're no longer out of ideas!

"But I don't want to write about being out of ideas! That's boring!"

Fine. I understand. Writing about not having any ideas to write about isn’t the most enjoyable topic to write about. Especially if you’ve written about it before or writing isn’t within your niche.

But you’re in luck. I’m not going to leave you hanging. There is one more way to gain some ideas. Here's the final step to regaining ideas:

Step 3: Consume content in your niche

Consume content in your niche.

Try going to one creator's content you follow and consuming lots of their content. This can even be your own content you've created in the past.

If you go down one creator's rabbit hole, you're bound to discover a topic or idea you haven't thought about before.

Or at least you may have discovered a topic you haven't thought about for a while.

Bam! Now you've got new ideas to write about again!

However, be careful with this step. It’s easy to consume and consume and consume, but not create content. Don’t fall into the endless consumption trap. It will prevent you from gaining new ideas to use for your own content. Instead, this endless consumption causes more problems than it solves. 

Endless consumption creates an information overload, which overwhelms your brain. Overloading your brain with information is only going to cloud your mind, preventing you from gaining ideas.

Avoid information overload by moderating your content consumption when using this step. Consume only as much content as you need to gain an idea. 

Consume 1 piece of content. Then, see if you’ve got any ideas from it. Take a few minutes to pause and reflect on the content. Repeat this process as needed until you’ve got an idea. Then, stop consuming content and run with the idea you gained.

Wrapping up

You’re not out of ideas. You just don’t have any ideas right now. 

And that’s ok. It happens sometimes.

What matters is getting back on track. It’s simple to regain ideas. Sometimes a simple mindset shift can help ideas come to mind. While other times you may need to go looking for ideas from pre-existing content.

Try this 3-step process when you don’t have any ideas. I guarantee you’ll be able to have an idea to write about or create content with after using this process.