When the Ideas Don't Come

The moment when you have to decide what to publish and nothing comes to mind happens to everyone. It's almost never a creativity problem: you're looking for the idea in the wrong place, namely inside your own head in front of a blank page.

The sources you already have

• Questions received in the last month, by message, phone or in person.
• The objections you hear before every quote.
• The mistakes you watch clients repeat, always the same ones.
• The things you take for granted that nobody else knows.

The last one is the most productive

Anyone who has worked in a field for years stops seeing what is obvious and what isn't. The information that feels trivial to you is often what your audience has never heard explained, and it's the easiest to tell well.

Collect instead of inventing

Keep an open list and note every question received, without filtering. In two weeks you accumulate more material than a month of publishing needs, and none of it was invented at a desk.

The wrong moment to look for ideas

When you already have to produce. Finding topics and producing are two different jobs: doing them together means accepting the first available idea instead of the best one you had.

The best ideas aren't found on the day you need them: they're collected in the weeks when they arrive on their own.