Brainstorming

Brainstorming prompts

When was the last time you tried something new?
Who do you sometimes compare yourself to?
What’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever heard someone say?
What life lesson did you learn the hard way?
What do you wish you spent more time doing five years ago?
Do you ask enough questions or do you settle for what you know?
Who do you love and what are you doing about it?
What’s a belief that you hold with which many people disagree?
What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
Do you celebrate the things you do have?
What is the difference between living and existing?
Have you done anything lately worth remembering?
What does your joy look like today?
If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow this person to be your friend?
When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards and just do what you know is right?
If you had the opportunity to get a message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?
If the average human lifespan was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
What do we all have in common besides our genes that makes us human?
If you could choose one book as a mandatory read for all high school students, which book would you choose?
Would you rather have less work or more work you actually enjoy doing?
What is important enough to go to war over?
Which is worse, failing or never trying?
When was the last time you listened to the sound of your own breathing?
What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
What does ‘The American Dream’ mean to you?
Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
If you could instill one piece of advice in a newborn baby’s mind, what advice would you give?
What is the most desirable trait another person can possess?
What are you most grateful for?
Is stealing to feed a starving child wrong?
What do you want most?
Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
What has life taught you recently?
What is the one thing you would most like to change about the world?
Where do you find inspiration?
Can you describe your life in a six word sentence?
If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
What impact do you want to leave on the world?
What is the most defining moment of your life thus far?
In the haste of your daily life, what are you not seeing?
If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
What lifts your spirits when life gets you down?
Have you ever regretted something you did not say or do?
Has your greatest fear ever come true?
Why do we think of others the most when they’re gone?
What is your most beloved childhood memory?
Is it more important to love or be loved?
If it all came back around to you, would it help you or hurt you?
If you had the chance to go back in time and change one thing would you do it?
If a doctor gave you five years to live, what would you try to accomplish?
What is the difference between falling in love and being in love?
Who do you think stands between you and happiness?
What is the difference between innocence and ignorance?
What is the simplest truth you can express in words?
What gives your life meaning?
Can there be happiness without sadness? Pleasure without pain? Peace without war?
What’s the one thing you’d like others to remember about you at the end of your life?
Is there such a thing as perfect?
To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
What does it mean to be human?
If you looked into the heart of your enemy, what do you think you would find that is different from what is in your own heart?
What do you love most about yourself?
Where would you most like to go and why?
Is it more important to do what you love or to love what you are doing?
What do you imagine yourself doing ten years from now?
What small act of kindness were you once shown that you will never forget?
What is your happiest childhood memory? What makes it so special?
Do you own your things or do your things own you?
Would you rather lose all of your old memories or never be able to make new ones?
How do you deal with someone in a position of power who wants you to fail?
What do you have that you cannot live without?
When you close your eyes what do you see?
What sustains you on a daily basis?
What are your top five personal values?
Why must you love someone enough to let them go?
Do you ever celebrate the green lights?
What personal prisons have you built out of fears?
What one thing have you not done that you really want to do?
Why are you, you?
If you haven’t achieved it yet what do you have to lose?
What three words would you use to describe the last three months of your life?
Is it ever right to do the wrong thing? Is it ever wrong to do the right thing?
How would you describe ‘freedom’ in your own words?
What is the most important thing you could do right now in your personal life?
If you could ask one person, alive or dead, only one question, who would you ask and what would you ask?
If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?
What is your number one goal for the next six months?
Would you ever give up your life to save someone else?
Are you happy with yourself?
What is the meaning of ‘peace’ to you?
What are three moral rules you will never break?
What does it mean to allow another person to truly love you?
Who or what do you think of when you think of love?
If your life was a novel, what would be the title and how would your story end?
What would you not give up for $1,000,000 in cash?
When do you feel most like yourself?
When you help someone do you ever think, “What’s in it for me?”
What is your greatest challenge?
How do you know when it’s time to continue holding on or time to let go?
How do you define success?
If someone could tell you the exact day and time you are going to die, would you want them to tell you?
If I could grant you one wish what would you wish for?
What have you read online recently that inspired you?
Why do religions that advocate unity divide the human race?
If you could live one day of your life over again, what day would you choose?
What can money not buy?
If you left this life tomorrow, how would you be remembered?
Beyond the titles that others have given you, who are you?
If you could live the next 24 hours and then erase it and start over just once, what would you do?
Is it possible to know the truth without challenging it first?
What word best describes the way you’ve spent the last month of your life?
What makes everyone smile?
What do you owe yourself?
What would your ‘priceless’ Mastercard-style commercial be?
Can you think of a time when impossible became possible?
Why do you matter?
How have you changed in the last five years?
What are you sure of in your life?
When you think of ‘home,’ what, specifically, do you think of?
What’s the difference between settling for things and accepting the way things are?
How many of your friends would you trust with your life?
What’s your definition of heaven?
What is your most prized possession?
How would you describe yourself in one sentence?
What stands between you and happiness?
What makes a person beautiful?
Is there ever a time when giving up makes sense?
What makes you proud?
How do you find the strength to do what you know in your heart is right?
Where do you find peace?
When have you worked hard and loved every minute of it?
How short would your life have to be before you would start living differently today?
Is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all?
What would you do if you made a mistake and somebody died?
Who do you trust and why?
If you were forced to eliminate every physical possession from your life with the exception of what could fit into a single backpack, what would you put in it?
How do you spend the majority of your free time?
Who do you think of first when you think of ‘success?’
What did you want to be when you grew up?
How will today matter in five years from now?
How have you helped someone else recently?
What is your greatest skill?
Do you see to believe or believe to see?
How are you pursuing your dreams right now?
What’s the next big step you need to take?
If today was the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?
If today was the last day of your life, who would you call and what would you tell them?
Who do you dream about?
What do you have trouble seeing clearly in your mind?
What are you looking forward to?
What is the number one thing you want to accomplish before you die?
When is love a weakness?
What has been the most terrifying moment of your life thus far?
Who is the strongest person you know?
If you could take a single photograph of your life, what would it look like?
Is the reward worth the risk?
For you personally, what makes today worth living?
What have you done in the last year that makes you proud?
What did you learn recently that changed the way you live?
What is your fondest memory from the past three years?
What are the primary components of a happy life?
How would the world be different if you were never born?
What is your favorite song and why?
With the resources you have right now, what can you do to bring yourself closer to your goal?
What are your top three priorities?
Why do we idolize sports players?
What is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
What do you see when you look into the future?
What makes you angry? Why?
What is the most valuable life lesson you learned from your parents?
What does love feel like?
What are your favorite simple pleasures?
If you could go back in time and tell a younger version of yourself one thing, what would you tell?
What do you do to deliberately impress others?
What will you never do?
Excluding romantic relationships, who do you love?
What is your earliest childhood memory?
What book has had the greatest influence on your life?
What three questions do you wish you knew the answers to?
What is the greatest peer pressure you’ve ever felt?
What’s the biggest lie you once believed was true?
In your lifetime, what have you done that hurt someone else?
What’s the best part of growing older?
What’s been on your mind most lately?
What do you think is worth waiting for?
What chances do you wish you had taken?
Where else would you like to live? Why?
What motivates you to go to work each day?
What do you wish you had done differently?
What is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness?
When was the last time you lied? What did you lie about?
What made you smile this week?
What do you do with the majority of your money?
What motivates you to be your best?
When was the last time you lost your temper? About what?
What will you never give up on?
When you look into the past, what do you miss the most?
How would you describe the past year of your life in one sentence?
What is the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?
What makes you uncomfortable?
If you had to move 3000 miles away, what one thing would you miss the most?
What worries you about the future?
What one ‘need’ and one ‘want’ will you strive to achieve in the next twelve months?
What life lessons did you have to experience firsthand before you fully understood them?
Do you like the city or town you live in? Why or why not?
What’s the best part of being you?
When you look back over the past month, what single moment stands out?
What do you do to relieve stress?
What is your happiest memory?
What is your saddest memory?
What would you like to change?
How many people do you love?
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
What’s your favorite true story that you enjoy sharing with others?
Right now, at this moment, what do you want most?
What are you waiting for? How are you writing your life’s story?
What makes love last?
What good comes from suffering?
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in the last year?
Based on you current daily actions and routines, where would you expect to be in five years?
What was your last major accomplishment?
Through all of life’s twists and turns who has been there for you?
What or who has been distracting you?
What are you looking forward to in the upcoming week?
Who is your mentor and what have you learned from them?
What are you uncertain about?
When you have a random hour of free time, what do you usually do?
If you could relive yesterday what would you do differently?
What do you do over and over again that you hate doing?
Would you rather your child be less attractive and extremely intelligent or extremely attractive and less intelligent?
What white lies do you often tell?
What is the biggest change you have made in your life in the last year?
What do you understand today about your life that you did not understand a year ago?
Whose life have you had the greatest impact on?
What have you done that you are not proud of?
When should you reveal a secret that you promised you wouldn’t reveal?
How would you spend your ideal day?
What is the one primary quality you look for in a significant other?
What do you admire most about your mother and father?
What is the best advice you have ever received?
If you had to be someone else for one day, who would you be and why?
What positive changes have you made in your life recently?
Who makes you feel good about yourself?
What is your biggest regret?
Which one of your responsibilities do you wish you could get rid of?
What’s something you don’t like to do that you are still really good at?
What type of person angers you the most?
What has fear of failure stopped you from doing?
If you could go back in time and change things, what would you change about the week that just passed?
When you meet someone for the very first time what do you want them to think about you?
Who would you like to forgive?
At what point during the last five years have you felt lost and alone?
What is one opportunity you believe you missed out on when you were younger?
Who has had the greatest impact on your life?
Are you happy with where you are in your life? Why?
In one year from today, how do you think your life will be different?
How have you sabotaged yourself in the past five years?
Other than money, what else have you gained from your current job?
In twenty years, what do you want to remember?
What are you most excited about in your life right now – today?
What experience from this past year do you appreciate the most?
What is the most enjoyable thing your family has done together in the last three years?
How many hours of television do you watch in a week? A month? A year?
What is the biggest obstacle that stands in your way right now?
What do you sometimes pretend you understand that you really don’t?
What do you like most about your job? What do you dislike most about your job?
What was the most defining moment in your life during this past year?
What’s the number one change you need to make in your life in the next twelve months?
What makes you feel secure?
What are the top three qualities you look for in a friend?
What simple gesture have you recently witnessed that renewed your hope in humanity?
What recent memory makes you smile the most?
What music do you listen to to lift your spirits when you’re feeling down?
If I gave you $1000 and told you that you had to spend it today, what would you buy?
What was the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
How many friends do you have in real life that you talk to regularly?
How much money per month is enough for you to live comfortably?
When was your first impression of someone totally wrong?
What is something you have always wanted since you were a kid?
What is the most recent dream you remember having while sleeping?
What confuses you?
What was the last thing you furiously argued about with someone?
What job would you never do no matter how much it paid?
What is the number one solution to healing the world?

Fun and de-stressing brainstorming
  • March 19, 2021
    • Remove the barriers to getting out to places like Dinamos etc, by investigating midweek.
      • Route, time needed, horarios, what to take with me.
      • Night before, have everything laid out for tomorrow.
    • iPad not conducive to productivity
Goals and priorities brainstorming
  • Questions for evaluating tasks and goals
  • My skills, things I am good at
  • What are the activities I do because I'm bored / obsess about organizing?
  • What would be the ideal life and workflows for me?
  • What should be my goals, family wise and professionally? I am not living with clear goals, just responding and maintaining
  • Why do I get so stressed out when too much to do?
  • Am I a support person for other peoples's visions?
    • I enjoy helping
    • I enjoy being given something to do that I know how to do, and left to just do it
    • I don't have a lot of vision
    • I don't enjoy managing others
Motvation / productivity brainstorming
Projects / giffmex brainstorming
  • March 2022
    • What do you have to say? What is your voice?
    • Can you now be as passionate about writing / course packets as you have been for TW? Time to switch gears?
    • Maybe I don't have the youthful energy and quick intellect of an Anne-Laure, but I can imitate her drive
    • "Top articles" section?
  • May 5, 2021
    • What about just translating helpful sentences and introducing them as to why they are important?
    • Visually distinguish 'logical argument of this chapter', 'terms', helpful bits', etc when summarizing chapters.
    • Just spending time after reading one chapter to reorganize it better.
  • April 26, 2021
    • Gethering knowledge is fun, but collating it is a chore. How to change that? This led me to a major braindump: Notelines idea and other ideas from same morning
    • Criteria for giffmex writing: how best to express and display this to help students in memorizing?
    • Not just 'What does this mean' but 'What would I use it for' and 'How does it work' and 'How to express this to overcome resistance to this?'
  • March 2021
    • I need a 'sabbatical plan' -
      • Sunday afternoons ore Mondays - green cards routines
      • Reading list and writing list for 'sabbatical'
    • Ness labs idea from collector to creator
      • Adding notes and tagging #ToProcess
      • Then processing to distill key idea, and tagging #ToCreate
      • Then combining ideas from #ToCreate tag, and creating something based on the idea sex
    • Set up an ANKI or some other way to review the most helpful ideas? Tag notes with Review this or Experiment with this, to let them percolate in my mind?
Questions for evaluating tasks and goals

Am I currently committed to it and feel I should bring closure to it before moving on to other things?
How closely does it conform to LAAC and RBM goals?
How many people will it help or potentially help?
How much would be enough of this goal to satisfy me?
Is it capable of being broken down into measurable, reachable targets?
Is it in line with my strengths, interests and gifts, or am I not the right person to do it?
Is it the best thing for me to do with my time here?
Will it be beneficial or detrimental to my spiritual wellbeing and that of my family?
Will it glorify God or will it merely satisfy some human whim?

Reading thoughts from my May 2021 spiritual retreat
  • I put this here because if I put it in an old file it will get lost forever.
  • Reading a book chapter is just like reading the Bible:
    • situation, responses desired and messages are really problems, solutions, and arguments.
    • This three fold system may not work for dictionary articles, which are informative or summary focused, not attempting to convince.
  • Things to look for in reading - types of reading
    • Main point
    • Logical flow and sequence
    • Problems - solutions - arguments
    • Helpful nuggets and quotes
    • Idea sex
    • Tables and images
Relationships brainstorming
Spiritual brainstorming
  • Dynalist Bible - orgz structure of passages
  • Read through the Bible to identify things to investigate
Thoughts and brainstorming Feb 2022

Free time

  • * I want to be more intentional about my use of free tim
    • In particular, I use a lot of my free time for myself - reading, watching, writing etc.
    • I feel like God is convicting me to be intentional about whom I spend my free time with - Blanca and kids, friends.

Conversations

  • Prep work before meeting someone
    • Have something inspiring and helpful to share with them
    • What don't I know about them that I ought to ask them about?

Devotions

  • Set Logos up for devotions: Bible and commentary

Reading

  • Paste less, think more? Slower reading?
    • "In what context how would / can I use this?"
    • "Is there something here I need to memorize or practice this week?"
  • Distinguishing between reading for mere exposure, reading for reflection, and reading for creating something

Love for God

  • How do we show love for God?
    • On the one hand, he has no needs that we can meet
    • God has said he doesn't need buildings and sacrifices
    • On the other hand, the Bible talks about pleasing God. He can be pleased.
    • People that God created and loved have needs. So loving others, and loving creation, shows love for God
    • Also love has to do with relationship. Listening (word) and speaking (prayer, worship)
    • Being the best we can be as a gift to God. Excellence.

Life and death

  • It would be better to die than to live longer without doing any good

Clergy and laity

  • We just assume every exhortation in the NT is meant for every Christian. We flatten the NT.
  • But what if some exhortations are for leaders and missionaries?
  • The Gospels show a distinction between some disciples, who were to leave everything and follow him, and other followers, who stayed home and gave support and hospitality to Jesus and his traveling disciples.
  • Acts and the epistles similarly show a distinction between Paul's apostolic band, and the Antioch and other Christians who stayed where they were.
  • Clearly there were people set aside for leadership. Apostles, elders, deacons.

Religious dialogue

  • "I didn't come to this conversation to win."
    • I came to share my ideas and arguments for your consideration ("this is what convinces me, and why"), regardless of what you do with them
    • I came to be exposed to new ideas and arguments for my consideration, regardless of what I do with them. That means we both already win by being exposed to new ideas.
    • The ideas that we come to adopt, are helpful because they convinced us.
    • The ideas that we are not convinced by, we can still work through them and form responses to them. So it is all helpful.
  • "We don't have to agree. We just have to show love."

Productivity

  • Lazy but clever people find easier ways to do things.
  • How can I be lazier in that sense? How can I do more things, more easily, with more excellence, and in less time? Small, incremental improvements that free me up and make me better?
    • Support
    • Team leading and admin
    • Concur and finances
    • Ministry
    • Family
  • Examples
    • Recent switch to putting our prayer letter links on giffmex.org on the advice of a supporter.
  • Maybe each week I can choose one area of my life to brainstorm for easier, better ways to do it?

Opening up unseen potential

  • What are ways in which I could invest my time and energy to open up new possibilities as yet unseen?
  • Example: My dictionary article database opens up new ways for others to save time finding articles.
  • Giving people access, shortening the time they can do it, etc
  • Tutorials
  • Obviously, looking for something more practical for people here

Change in my ministry

  • I should print business card for doing visits and interviews

Problems

  • Emotional / volitional
    • Worried about support
    • Worried about impact of HSR on CRCNA
    • Lack of impulse control at times (ipad, for example)
    • Resistance to certain jobs
    • Guilty feelings
  • Interpersonal
    • Lack of social life
    • Kids are stuck
    • Relationship with Blanca
    • Am I of any real help to anyone?
  • Physical
    • Tiredness
    • Eyesight
  • Financial
    • Retirement lack of savings
    • Ignorance of most financial things
  • Professional
    • I feel incompetent in many areas
  • Intellectual
    • "Reading ADD"
    • Notes fragmented across many TWs and Dynalist

Good stuff

  • Blanca and kids
  • Muffin!
  • Breakfasts out
  • Nice home to live in
  • I have a job
  • Cars functoining
  • Music, reading
  • TW skills
  • Host of stored notes
  • Not in debt

Solutions

  • Breaks
  • Who can help?
  • Exercise, water
  • Break into smaller components
  • Identify loops to close
  • Prayer, grace
  • Egg timer, limit to time frame so as not to feel overwhelmed
  • Only go to ipad if I have a plan. eg, read in bed, out of range of wifi
z. topical. Why I didn't develop a walking routine in Acoxpa
  • Don't beat yourself up
    • I got a urinary infection and prostate right after arriving (we had just turned over the keys to the old place to Gustavo!). The prostate stuff required two hospitalizations and a leg bag between them.
    • Because of eveything, I was concerned that I wouldn't last a 40 minute walk without peeing or pooping.
    • There was also my Revelation class, the Resonate meetings at our house, library inventory, and my folks visit. Then in January my busy season. Very busy, and how much time did it leave me to walk?
    • Then the pandemic hit, and it was less safe to go out.
    • Probably thanks to all these reasons, my blood sugar was higher, and I was less inclined to exert myself
  • Personal reasons
    • The old walk had more beauty, culture and memories than the areas here, which are commercial, or boring-looking residential.
z. topical. Why I felt so disoriented today March 2021
  • I woke up today feeling so distant from my best life.
  • I wrote down some of the causes
    • The retreat that ended early this week set me off schedule - no seminary, church was at the retreat, etc
    • The food poisoning left me also out of whack when we came home. Most of what I did was TW - two for Abe, the finishing of the Customizer plugin, reading and organizing notes.
    • Armando's passing surely still has me sad - I even got choked up on my walk - the nostalgia really hit me
    • My blood sugar was high - not enough exercise or water
    • CPAP has me breathing hard at night
    • The move to Acoxpa, and the pandemic, has us far from the people we love
    • I am just getting out of a very long busy season
    • I have been lax in my routines, especially prayer, social, and exercise
    • I was down that the response to Customizer, while enthusiastic on the part of some, was quite small