Coaching practices for Rapid Ideation
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Rapid Ideation, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- The perfect idea arrives crystal clear and I think "no way I forget this"
- I’ve got maybe two ideas for what to do about this and both feel hopeless, so I shoot every other thought down before I even finish it
- I grab the first idea that pops up and start poking holes in it immediately, so I never get more than two or three options on the table
- Every time I try to brainstorm, the critic and the dreamer are talking over each other
- 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.
Practices that may help
- Capture ideas the moment they surface
Incubation insights are fragile — they must be captured within seconds or they’re gone.
The Three Bs of Creativity: Bed, Bath, and Bus - Generate solutions without premature evaluation
List as many potential solutions as possible before judging any of them.
Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical - Ideate — generate options before judging
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Design Thinking, Step by Step - 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 - Defer all judgment during ideation
Separate the generating phase from the evaluating phase — they cannot run simultaneously without killing output.
Creative Confidence, Made Practical - Urge Surfing: Riding Out the Impulse Without Acting
Treat an urge to act impulsively like a wave — observe it rise and fall without being swept away.
The STOP Skill: A DBT Technique for Crisis Moments - Use brainwriting to defeat production blocking
Have everyone write ideas silently at the same time, then share — this is the group brainstorm that research actually supports.
Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical - Portable thought catching: the one-column version
In a stressful moment, write just the hot thought and one piece of contradicting evidence.
The Thought Record: CBT’s Core Self-Examination Tool - Mini-RAIN: a 2-minute version for mid-day use
Apply the four steps rapidly in 2 minutes to break emotional reactivity in the middle of a difficult moment.
RAIN Meditation: Tara Brach’s Four-Step Practice - TIPP: Rapid Physiological De-escalation for Intense Distress
Use Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, and Paired muscle relaxation to bring crisis-level emotion down quickly.
The STOP Skill: A DBT Technique for Crisis Moments
Related concerns
- Brainstorm Before Evaluate
Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
Separate divergence from convergence sessions
- Defer Judgment Brainstorming
Separate generating ideas from evaluating them — criticism comes later, never during.
Defer judgment during ideation
- Defer Judgment Ideation
Separate generating ideas from evaluating them — criticism comes later, never during.
- Deferred Judgment Brainstorming
Separate generating ideas from evaluating them — criticism comes later, never during.
- Separate Ideation From Evaluation
Separate the generating phase from the evaluating phase — they cannot run simultaneously without killing output.
Defer all judgment during ideation
- Systematic Ideation Tool
List as many potential solutions as possible before judging any of them.
Generate solutions without premature evaluation
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