Practice15 min read

Brainstorming and Idea Generation

Your infinite brainstorming partner

AI never runs out of ideas. It never judges your starting point. And it can generate options faster than any whiteboard session.

Brainstorming techniques with AI

Technique 1: The Quantity Blast

"Give me 15 ideas for [topic]. Don't filter for quality — I want volume. Include some wild, unconventional ideas."

This gets past the AI's tendency to only give "safe" suggestions.

Technique 2: Perspective Shifting

"How would [a specific type of person] approach this problem?"

Examples:

"How would a startup founder solve this?"

"How would someone with zero budget handle this?"

"What would a customer say is the real problem here?"

Technique 3: Constraint-Based Ideation

Add a constraint to force creative thinking:

"How could we do this in half the time?"

"What if we had to solve this without any technology?"

"What if our budget was 10x larger? What about 10x smaller?"

Technique 4: Build and Refine

Start broad, then narrow:

"Give me 10 ideas for improving team morale."

"Expand on ideas 3 and 7 — give me specific implementation steps."

"Now combine the best elements of both into a single plan."

Best brainstorming hack: Tell AI "Include at least 3 unconventional or surprising ideas" in your prompt. This pushes it past generic suggestions and into genuinely creative territory.

Practice Exercise

Your team's quarterly offsite is in 3 weeks and you're in charge of planning it. The team is 12 people, budget is $2,000, and it needs to be a full day that balances team building with actual strategic planning for next quarter. You're in a mid-sized city. Write a prompt to brainstorm creative ideas for the offsite agenda.

Interactive prompt practice is coming in a future update! For now, try writing your prompt in your favorite AI tool, then reveal the model answer below to compare.

Congratulations!

You've completed "AI for Your Workday"! Here's what you've learned:

What AI is good at (and what it isn't) — so you know when to use it

The RICE Framework — Role, Instruction, Context, Expectations — for writing effective prompts

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Practical applications — emails, summaries, audience adaptation, analysis, and brainstorming

The most important thing now? Practice. The more you use AI in your daily work, the better you'll get at prompting — and the more time you'll save.

Start tomorrow: pick one task from your to-do list and try using AI to get a first draft. You might be surprised how much faster your day goes.