Brainstorm Your Way To Your Career

Try using a creative approach to thinking about your college major or career.

True creativity is simply making connections between unrelated things. We’ve all heard about famous inventors who came up with hugely successful ideas while in the shower, napping or daydreaming. When the mind is relaxed, it makes connections between things that the working rational mind can’t see.

Businesses use brainstorming techniques all the time to improve their situation; forge new ideas; and to determine the risk and rewards of trying new things. In the same way, you can think of your career like a business opportunity. Isn’t that what it is, after all?

Brainstorming is an easy method for listing ideas and can be done by simply writing them down on a pad or poster. You can brainstorm about your college major or career by working alone -- or with friends. Follow four rules, developed by Alex Faickney Osborn, the inventor of brainstorming:

Focus on quantity: Generate a lot of ideas very quickly. Osborn believed that quantity leads to quality. The more ideas you generate, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution. Any idea can be developed later into something positive.

Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, you should focus on extending or adding to an idea. You’ll critique the ideas later. You will feel free to generate unusual ideas, if you hold off on judging them. Remind yourself and your helpers of these facts if they’re reluctant to jot an idea down. Sometimes, or if they inadvertently discourage someone else with a “knee-jerk” negative reaction; even a non-verbal one, like making a face.

Welcome unusual ideas: Sometimes an idea will pop into your head that doesn’t seem connected to anything else that’s been listed. This is a good indication that you’re effectively brainstorming! Write it down. By looking from a new perspective and suspending assumptions, you might come up with better solutions.

Combine and improve ideas: When you combine ideas, a single better good idea often results. It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by “association”.

To begin, give yourself prompts: questions to answer by making a list:
What do you to do for fun?
What do you dream about doing?
What would be cool to do?
What kinds of things do other people do for fun that you would like to do? (Think about specific people you’ve heard about or know.)
What kinds of jobs have you heard about that sound cool?


Do not worry about how practical or possible these ideas are! Do not restrict your list by judging how skilled or what resources other people use to do these things.

You are going to expand, develop and revise these ideas in a later step.

When recording your ideas, you can make a list, or a “mind map”, or do “graphic record”, using pictures and symbols, along with words. Do what’s easier and faster. High energy makes brainstorming the most fun and productive! One person could facilitate your group and someone else could record. For an introduction to mind-mapping, watch creator Tony Buzan’s explanation.

Have fun with brainstorming and let me know how it turns out! I’ll write more on the next steps in a future blog.