You can’t write essays or articles without generating ideas first. The is no shortcut around this fact. That’s why Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole created the Endless Idea Generator. It’s a framework designed to help you generate an endless stream of ideas. Dickie and Nicolas explain the framework in greater detail in their Ship 30 for 30 course.

In this post, I wanted to give an overview of the framework for anyone struggling to generate ideas. Having a collection of ideas will make you feel like you’ll always have something to write about.

But many people think that generating ideas is a challenge.

Fear of Not Being Able To Generate Ideas⌗

I had a fear that I wasn’t capable of generating ideas, and I’m sure others in my Ship 30 cohort felt the same way.

Here are some thoughts I had before I practiced the framework:

  • “I might be able to genereate 3-5 ideas, but I’ll struggle to generate more than that”
  • “I don’t have the time to generate that many ideas”
  • “What if my ideas are bad?”

But as soon as I started practicing the framework, these thoughts went away. Sure I struggled in the beginning, but once I generated 3-4 ideas the rest started pouring in. So what if I generated some bad ideas? I generated enough good ideas to write 10+ essays, and it only took me 20-30 minutes.

Let’s explore the steps involved in the framework to put your fears to rest.

Step 1: Write Down Your Ideas⌗

You’ll want to maintain an idea log. Anytime an idea comes to mind or you find a source of inspiration, then write it down (or type it out). It doesn’t matter what you use to store your idea log, but it’s important you have one.

I started off using a notepad to write down ideas, but I migrated to Bear a few weeks later. I found it more convenient to have my ideas synced across my phone and laptop. I also wanted a search functionality rather than flipping through pages to find an idea.

Step 2: Create Your Content Strategy⌗

Pick a common category among the ideas in your idea log. For example, software engineering is a category. Producitivty is a category. Cryptocurrency is a category. Now you’ll generate 3 content buckets as follows:

  • General Audience (Example: Avid Readers)
  • Niche Audience (Example: Read It Later App Users)
  • Company/Industry (Example: The Future Of Long-Form Reading)

Now that you have 3 content buckets, you’ll want to write 3-10 headlines for each bucket. Here’s my example for the General Audience bucket I defined above:

  • “Authors You Should be Reading”
  • “3 Ways To Improve Your Reading Consumption”
  • “Why Being Aware Of What You Read Is Important”

Step 3: The 4A Framework⌗

Pick a headline and choose the direction you want to take. You have four options to choose from:

  • Actionable (here’s how)
  • Analytical (here are the numbers)
  • Aspirational (yes, you can)
  • Anthropological (here’s why)

Your direction dictates how you’ll aproach your writing. For example, “actionable” and “3 Ways To Improve Your Reading Consumption” are a good match because the how is important. The best fit for “Why Being Aware Of What You Read Is Important” would be “antropolohical” because I care about exploring the why.

Step 4: Testing Different Proven Approaches⌗

In this step, you decide how you want to organize your writing. Here are the choices:

  • How To
  • Lessons Learned
  • Mistakes
  • Quotes
  • Ways
  • Tools
  • Trends
  • Stats
  • Reasons
  • Examples
  • (Embarrassing) Moments

Each choice has an outline you should follow:

  • If you’re writing a “How To” piece, then you’ll organize your writing in steps (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc.)
  • “Reasons” is one way to organize your writing for an “anthropological” direction (Reason 1, Reason 2, etc.)

It’s much easier to write with an outline than starting from a blank page. 80% of the work for writing an essay or article is filling out the details of an outline.

Step 5: Telling The Reader Your Credibility⌗

You need credibility, otherwise readers won’t consider your perspective. You have three options:

  1. You’re the expert. Share your thoughts on the topic.
  2. Discover experts on the topic, and share their insights and opinions.
  3. Give your opinion, but make it known that it’s your opinion

Putting It All Together⌗

Here’s a summary of the pipeline: Idea Log => Content Buckets => 4A => Proven Approach => Credibility

You’ll be creating a stream of ideas once you start applying the Endless Idea Generator. No more worrying about what to write about. Unfortunately, with so many damned ideas you might develop choice paralysis.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think of this post on Twitter.