Go out for a walk. Take only your phone with you (and headphones).1 Go somewhere isolated without much noise to distract you, any greenery/park is great. Take out the phone and headphones. Play some soft instrumental music that you enjoy, but doesn’t distract you. Open your note taking app of choice and open note. It needs to be a new empty note since we don’t want anything to interfere with the flow of ideas. Let’s start writing.
I feel like you need to do this kind of exercise once a week to generate a lot of ideas. More often would be great, but life gets in the way and you might not have the time. To be honest, I only do it once a month since I’m usually busy, but it is still better than nothing.
Another great way it’s to just walk while writing. It is riskier since walking while you’re distracted is not great, but if you do it in a park or pedestrian-only area you should be relatively safe.
You have ideas, always have and always will. You only need to allow them to come out freely.
It has been 20 minutes and I wrote 4 different first drafts for articles. They’re all just rough words on a page and nowhere close to coherent pieces. They’re all great starting points if I ever have a day when I’m out of ideas and I’m struggling to find inspiration.
There are times when I’m in my office and I can’t even manage to write the first draft in 20 minutes. If the words don’t come out, change the scenery!
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You can also take a notepad if you prefer writing on paper, but you should still bring your phone. ↩