As a content creator or aspiring content creator, running out of ideas is everyone’s nightmare. If you’re in a creative rut, read every line of this intersect because it’s about to change your life.

Finding ideas is a full-time job for some people. Which means they’re constantly in capture mode. Which means you can learn and teach.

Let’s get something straight.

Nothing is original. If you struggle to find an idea, you probably are trying to be “unique.”

When you steal like an artist, ideas find you, you don’t find them.

Creating content is not an easy job, but it has the potential to become fun. 

Imagine constantly having amazing ideas flowing through your mind.

What could this mean to you?

I faced the same challenge as you.

Now? I feel I can write 5 books, and I’m not even kidding.

Not having ideas is only one problem.

But it’s not the only one. I wanna address all of them (more on this later)

Unleash Your Creative Potential (How I constantly produce high-quality content)

I never thought I would want to create content for a living. I want to be a creator. I want to fill the gap between complex knowledge and new creators.

The easy way to unleash your creative potential is to start looking backward. Yes, even if you think your life is boring. My favourite way to do it is through self-reflecting questions.

Ask yourself:

What have I learned in the past weeks? (divide each week individually)

This one question will help you become aware of the knowledge you acquire. Therefore, become more intentional about the content you consume. To produce high-quality content, you must consume high-quality content.

Unfortunately, I don’t think “regular” short-form content is high-quality content.

I think it’s the complete opposite. If you’re careless, it fucks your attention span and teaches you incomplete things.

Think of it for a few minutes. When you wanna get to know someone, do you speak with him 10 minutes every 4 hours, or do you spend 1-2 hours a day?

Those 1-2 hours a day add up until you determine if you wanna continue or not.

A 10 min conversation might spark an interest, but it’s never enough.

The same goes for online. You can’t expect to know the real value of a creator based solely on his short-form content. It’s barely scratching the surface.

There is a better way to do it. I don’t have the time to waste my time. The feature I like on TikTok is the “following” tab, which shows you content only from people you follow.

This is the strategy I’m gonna adopt to consume high-quality short-form content:

1. Create a burner TikTok account for a topic (e.g. Productivity)

2. For that topic, I will follow Matt d’Avella, Ali Abdaal, Thomas Frank, Francesco d’Alessio, and Scott Friesen

3. Dedicate 2h every 2 weeks for mindful consumption on the “following feed.

4. Take notes & capture new ideas

You can’t expect to start producing high-quality content from the get-go. I’m not praising myself. I never thought I was creating high-quality content until my audience told me. Nobody cares about you or your content until you resolve someone’s problem.

Here’s what’s good about the method I just shared with you. For every new topic you wanna focus on, you either create a new account or just unfollow everyone and follow the top 5 influencers on the topic you wanna learn.

Why not only consume their YT videos?

My answer is that many YouTubers put effort into producing high-quality short videos to attract that audience to their channel. Therefore, you can acquire solid knowledge with their shorts.

Also, it’s easier to make intersections and get new ideas when you watch different creators. It’s an entirely different ball game when you use TikTok productively.

I consume TONS of long-form content (YT videos and medium articles.)

If a video on a particularly relevant topic has thousands of views, it’s a high-quality idea.

The quality of your idea establishes the quality of your content.

Do you understand the cycle? High-quality ideas come from high-quality content, and high-quality content comes from high-quality ideas.

1. Start consuming high-quality long-form content (like mine, hehe)

2. Turn low-quality short-form content into high-quality consumption

3. Capture ideas 

Those are disguised problems in themselves and are reasons you don’t have new ideas. The problems:

1. Consuming low-quality content (tweets and shorts all day long)

2. Not capturing ideas (thoughts, notes, highlights)

3. Not nurturing ideas (IMPORTANT)

How I Never Run Out of Ideas

I wanna elaborate more on the third point (not nurturing ideas.) Nurturing an idea means connecting THE idea with other ideas.

I recently started building my second brain on Obsidian. I love it. There is a learning curve, but I enjoy it. It is helping me make new connections. My content revolves around “intersections.” It is rarely about one thing, and I LOVE IT.

I will create a course on Obsidian in the upcoming year. I watched tons of YouTube videos and realized that everyone is different. Those teaching Obsidian have one thing in common, “assuming their viewer wants to use their system.”

That was my most significant friction and frustration. It makes you feel stupid like you’re the problem when it doesn’t work.

I want to create a course that teaches you how to build your OWN system and use Obsidian to upgrade your creativity and productivity, not downgrade it. But before that? I need to master it myself. 

I will document my progress and how I can build multiple projects simultaneously.

Let’s continue.

How to Nurture an Idea

1) Capture the idea

Let me give you a live example. You are reading this right now. What is the MAIN idea that you get from it? Ok, let me help you.

Main idea: Ideas are everywhere.

2) Stretch the idea

Now that you have the main idea, you can nurture it by making new intersections and expanding it using the Idea compass. This is a method I discovered through Vicky Zhao.

Here is my Obsidian Idea Compass template (credit to Vicky):

I’m taking your role here and will fill out the form as if I were you.

It turns out I’m keeping the note and will write a newsletter about the Idea Compass. Do you see how powerful it is? You’ll find yourself saying, "Oh, how I didn’t think about it before?”

How to Maintain Your Unleashed Potential

You can do many things to keep up your new super Saiyan mode.

You have to be willing to do things others aren’t willing to do.

If you wanna compete at the elite level, you've got to do what the elites do.

It includes getting good sleep, eating healthy meals, hitting the gym, and prioritizing rest.

You’ll experience many different phases. At some point, you might create tons of content without even consuming any content. I made the entire month based on my current knowledge and experience with AI.

Those are basic tips. Many high-level creators do crazy things, but we don’t need to take them as an excuse. I don’t eat healthy ALL THE TIME. I love burgers and desserts. Two things I will never cut out. 

In addition to the Idea Compass, there’s one unbeatable thing on Twitter. It’s the capacity to test ideas in abundance.

Here’s what you can do right away:

1) Write a Newsletter based on previous, current, or future problems (easiest way to get started)

1a) Write a Newsletter based on a requested topic from the audience (5+ people asking for the same thing is a great start)

2) Repurpose 3-5 Tweets and 1-2 Twitter Threads from the Newsletter

3) Write the upcoming Newsletter based on high-performing Tweet or Thread

4) Repeat the process (ask your audience + evaluate your data)

You’ll quickly discover how easy it is to find new ideas when you already have performing ideas out there. You can connect two or three performing ideas now. The cycle never ends.

I like to approach creativity from a holistic perspective.

Based on the success of my free guide. I decided to build a course (I don’t have a name yet.)  You will learn how to develop holistic creativity and create endless content to build your personal brand without a niche and sacrificing your values.

Thirteen people have already put their trust in me. You can join them on my waitlist to benefit from a 45% discount when I release the course (in two months.)

Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your day.

- Imed