Brainstorming can be tough, especially for those of us that need to mull things over a bit before putting anything down on paper. There are ways to short-circuit our usual ways of thinking though, techniques that help us get out of our own way and really unleash the creativity within us. Today we’ll be talking through one call 100mph Thinking, a concept that comes from Tom Monahan’s excellent read “The Do-it-Yourself Lobotomy: Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking.”

Let’s jump in, shall we?

How 100mph Thinking Works

With this brainstorming technique, quantity is the name of the game. Quality does not matter. The goal is to think of as many unique answers to a given question (which must be simple to answer) as possible within a short period of time, usually one minute.

Let’s look at an example.

Say you were going to apply 100mpg thinking to answer the following question: what are all the different ways you could protect your house from intruders?

Chances are you’d start with the obvious answers: install a security system, use exterior motion-sensor lighting, build a fence, keep a baseball bat behind the door, sleep with a flamethrower beside your bed (what, just me on that one? Come on guys).

Sooner or later though, you run out of obvious ideas… and that’s where things get wild. Maybe you got into ideas like building a moat around your home and filling it with crocodiles, or burying land mines in your front yard, or hiring assassins to spend the night on your rooftop waiting to descend on unsuspecting burglars in the night.

At the end of all the craziness, you’ll probably have dozens of ideas in front of you. Some will make sense, others will be dubious at best. Here’s the thing though: the value isn’t necessarily in finding the perfect solution in the form of one of the things you wrote down. Often, you won’t have a “perfect” idea.

But you might have an idea that has elements that you want to borrow and attach to a different idea.

The important part you can’t skip after getting all your ideas down on paper is to look at each one and ask the question “What do I like about this idea?” Often, the answer to this question can lead to another idea that is worth using.

Why 100mph Thinking Matters

Here’s the thing: when asked to brainstorm something, especially something that isn’t intuitive (like “What new product should we introduce?” or “What offer should we attach to this widget?”), the first ideas you think of are often not the most original. They’re likely the same ideas that everyone else is thinking of, similar to the top answer on the board in Family Feud.

In other words, if you thought of it immediately, so did your competitor. That won’t give you any sort of competitive advantage.

Often, the unique, ownable idea is buried deep, and takes some digging to get to, like a rare truffle found deep underground. This is the value of 100mph thinking: it helps you get past the obvious, into the more unexpected ideas that can help you break through the noise in your industry and introduce something truly noteworthy.

Wrapping it Up

You don’t need to self-identify as a “creative thinker” in order to make great use of 100mph thinking. In fact, Tom’s entire book is dedicated to hacking our own minds to get out of that restrictive inner-monologue that says “I’m not creative.” It was a game-changer when I first started using it, and I’ve actually seen it lead to ideas that eventually were implemented within my company. Give it a shot, and let’s see what 100mph thinking can do for you!