When looking for ideas, you don't have to rely on intuition or inspiration alone. Using appropriate frameworks, you can multiply the ideas you generate.

James Altucher, an internet celebrity and writer, advocates writing a list of 10 ideas every day.

The hope is, by generating 3650 ideas, you will have a few winners: ideas that make a big impact.

I followed Altucher's suggestions a few times without much success. I just don't seem to have it in me to become an idea machine.

When a writing challenge I'm part of, sent a prompt for "100 ideas you wish to write about", my first reaction was to give it a miss. I almost quit just a couple of days after the challenge started.

Then I decided to give it a shot. I listed the broad topics I wished to write about - which was only 3 ideas.

I then used a couple of frameworks I had created to break these topics down into component ideas. This gave me just under 20 ideas.

Then I used my favourite framework for developing ideas: Why-What-How-Now. That helped me get to 72 ideas.

I took a break, went for a walk, and thought of a few more adjacent themes that I could write about. Then applying the frameworks, I came up with more ideas that allowed me to cross the 100 mark.

My takeaway from this exercise: don't just rely on your brain/memory to come up with ideas. Use frameworks that increase the number of ideas, even if mechanically.