lifehack: brainstorming as a style

Though the office-week is over, I'd like to talk about one of the most effective ways for making decisions, collecting data and working out strategy. This is brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. The method was first popularized in the late 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborn in a book called Applied Imagination. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output with brainstorming.

For detailed information you can use the Wikipedia article, while I'm going to talk about the main modification of brainstorming that I often use in my work and in my blogging. I call it "notebook method" and "collective-notebook method".

This means you get a notebook, a sheet of paper or a desk and a marker and write down all the necessary tasks, aims, facts, ideas, opinions etc. on the subject. Neither priorities nor "the most important things" are allowed. This is like a flow of information structured only by key-values or key-features. And only after finishing this, you can start the process of "marking", putting "values", "NBs", connections and relations etc.

This is a rather effective way to form out the task-list or key-values' list for the project, list of topics for the blog or questionnaire for investigation or project's discussion. Try this and you'll see the way it really works.

Besides I'd like to show you (as well as remind myself) some useful sites about brainstorming as the way of business-solving, decision-making and having a finely structured discussion:

MindTools for brainstorming.
Methods of brainstorming for manager
Advanced brainstorming in the UK

I've focused only on the one way of effective brainstorming which suits best for the solo decision-making. If you have a team or you are a part of the team, you have to try some more for getting the best result. Lifehacked decisions are always more productive than traditional boring arguing, remember this.