matthew_west•21d agoProlific Poster

Serious question, has anyone else started asking 'what's the dumbest way to answer this?' to get unstuck?

I was trying to write a help guide last week and just hit a wall, staring at a blank page for like an hour. I remembered something a teacher said in college about reverse brainstorming, so I literally typed out 'The dumbest way to explain this is...' and just started writing nonsense. I said you should mail a paper letter to your computer, lmao. But after a paragraph of that, my brain finally clicked and I could see the actual, simple steps I was missing. It felt silly, but it totally broke the block. I've used it three times since then for different kinds of questions. It's like tricking your brain into seeing the problem from a weird angle. Has anyone else found a weird trick like this that actually works for getting answers flowing?

3 comments

3 Comments

averyc9421d ago

That "mail a paper letter to your computer" example is perfect. I always tried to force a perfect answer first, which just locked me up. Starting with the worst possible version takes all the pressure off, and the right path just shows up by contrast. I'm totally stealing this for my next writing block.

julias4421d ago

My old drafts were full of perfect starts that went nowhere.

mila_murphy21d ago

Sounds like a good way to end up with a page full of nonsense you have to delete later.