engage in physical exercise. Jogging, swimming, biking, hiking, weight-lifting — all of these activities are great for idea generation. The key is they are all sort of mindless – not requiring much detailed thought. This may seem paradoxical — if you are trying to shut down your conscious mind, wouldn’t you want to distract it with a conscious thought process? No — it seems you want to have the opposite effect– you want to lull the conscious questioning thinker to sleep, and simple repetitive physical work seems to do that. Likewise, playing a rhythm instrument like drums or bass, or any sort of rhythmic chanting or dancing, will produce a similar result.
These activities, along with morning showers, afternoon massages, and evening hot tubs, may be considered strange in the corporate setting (except in California.) Here are some more corporately flavored, “structured” ways to generate unconscious thinking.
Mind mapping is an excellent technique for tapping the unconscious. Tony Buzan, the inventor of mind mapping, has a book called The Mind Map Book which details this technique. Mind mapping seems to unlock certain expressive mechanisms not available by writing. Drawing representations of your problems and possible solutions, however crudely, also works well. For truly graphically challenged, try collages made from cutout images. Sometimes just flipping though magazines will stimulate ideas. Get a big stack of publications — ones with good pictures — and start flipping.
There are activities which you can do in groups. You can play word association games. The game will usually have a context — the idea you’d like to explore. Start with a list of words which relate to your central idea, and free associate.