Coaching practices for Creative Input

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Creative Input, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I sit down expecting something original to just arrive out of nowhere, and when the blank page stays blank I decide I’m not creative
• Every time I try to brainstorm, the critic and the dreamer are talking over each other
• Every time we get the team in a room to brainstorm, the loudest two people steer it and everyone else goes quiet
• The moment an idea forms, this critic in my head pounces and kills it before I’ve even written it down, so I end up staring at a blank page with nothing because nothing was ever allowed to survive long enough to grow.
• I grab the first decent idea that shows up and run with it, because it seems good enough and I’m impatient

Practices that may help

1. Steal, steal, then remix
   Collect the best examples you can find, then combine and mutate them into something new.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
2. Separate divergence from convergence sessions
   Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
3. Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
   Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
4. Defer all judgment during ideation
   Separate the generating phase from the evaluating phase — they cannot run simultaneously without killing output.
   Creative Confidence, Made Practical
5. Quantity first: generate the most ideas possible before evaluating any
   The best way to have a good idea is to have many ideas — originality rises with volume, so generate recklessly before selecting.
   The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice
6. Maximize quantity of ideas before evaluating
   Set an explicit quantity target — generate at least 20 ideas before reviewing any of them.
   The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection
7. Walk to generate ideas (divergent thinking)
   When you need many options, walk while you brainstorm.
   Walking for Creativity
8. Collect everything that resonates — without editing
   Build a practice of gathering ideas, images, sounds, and fragments without evaluating whether they are "good enough."
   The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making
9. Combine and build on others’ ideas
   Treat every idea as a building block — the best ideas in a session are usually hybrids.
   Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical
10. Ask what a specific other person would do
    Step into a named other’s perspective to access approaches you would not generate as yourself.
    Oblique Strategies, Made Practical

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.