Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Me, Myself, & Ideas*
Some Ideas about How To Brainstorm by Yourself
In these modern times of solopreneurs, freelancers, and those who are interested in developing side hustles, this book means to guide the reader about how to do solo brainstorming. This might seem like an impossible phrase, but it is really about finding the ideas and answers within yourself to problems you might face in your solo business career since you don’t have the support of a group. The authors are like cheerleaders, using bright colors, nonlinear page design, and sometimes wacky ideas in an attempt to get you to dig deep for them.
The first couple of chapters are about what to do before you brainstorm: setting ground rules, thinking about your personality in regard to brainstorming, setting up your space, and getting out of your common work-a-day headspace. The longest chapter is the one on brainstorming itself, where the authors set up models for how to structure your approach to brainstorming in the guise of assignments. The last two chapters are about what to do after your brainstorming session, letting it mellow and then coming back to decide what you might want to work with.
I thought the book was at times a little too over-the-top. Some ideas are so zany that I couldn’t see the practicality of them. There are certainly nuggets here that will help you as you try to come up with ideas, but it does take some work to separate the wheat from the chaff. I think a shorter book would have been better, forcing the authors to drill down and write in a focused fashion.
That said, if you are working for or by yourself and needing to come up with ideas, this book could give you some structure in how to best approach this.
