A Toolset For Getting Unstuck When Your Creativity Is Blocked

Getting stuck, getting unstuck

We product managers are inventing stuff most of the time. Whether it’s new features, or designs, or go to market materials, or just making decisions. And that means we are going to have creative blocks. A lot. That is, except for those times when we can steal stuff from others. Unfortunately, we can’t steal as much as I’d like!

A toolset for overcoming creative blocks

So, I’ve honed a set of “thinking tools” over the years to help me make progress in this invention process. Especially when I’m stuck (which happens all the time), I find I can often get unstuck using one or more of these techniques. This list includes:

• Mindmaps – I have several product management-specific mindmap templates
• My product management rules of thumb
• The V.A.L.U.A.B.L.E. rubric for requirements
• The Cynefin framework, especially the Complex quadrant
• Asking good questions (open-ended, “5 Whys”)
• Talking to other people, even people who don’t know anything about the topic and aren’t that interested – it turns out I “think by talking”
• Creating a Powerpoint about the topic, and then presenting it (out loud, but only to myself)
• Crappy first drafts and “Just get started” and “The simplest thing that could possibly work“
• “Write the Amazon review first“
• Anthropology – getting back to the people whose problem I’m solving to make sure I really understand it. (Problems are much easier to solve when you understand them correctly!)
• Sketching and mockups, even though I’m a terrible artist and designer. Simply putting something down on paper or in Balsamiq or Powerpoint often breaks down obstacles.
• Appropriation – seeing how others have solved this problem, or finding out how similar problems are solved in a different domain. (“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”)

Especially if I’m stuck, I do some of these things and I find myself, against all odds, getting unstuck and making progress. Sometimes it literally feels like a miracle.

More tools in the toolbox, coming up

Some of these I’ve discussed before (links provided above). But much of this post is only a tease. I plan to make follow on posts about my mindmaps. But let me know if you want me to drill down one of more of these ideas.