Cycles of Concentration: Brainstorming
Brainstorming, in any area, grants your mind an unfettered opportunity to frolic about in cloud bursts of ideas and lightning flashes of possibilities. Realize, some minds take to such outpourings better than others. A few—often those least used to being called upon for original, unscripted thinking—sit pensive, uncomfortable, and unproductive for so long, the inner being may almost convince itself that it inhabits a body with no mind of its own.
Rest assured, this is a categorical impossibility.
Though it may be unpracticed and insecure, a mind is functioning somewhere in there. If it is yours, try not to make it feel self-conscious about needing to perform at will! Be not disappointed in big solitary splats of thought or dribbles of ideas. Use them, inadequate though they seem to be, to encourage more output.
On the other hand, some minds break forth in a literal deluge of potential, ideas rolling by so quickly, they are barely defined or conscious long enough to register as verifiable thought.
Rain Barrels for Thoughts
The first order of business in either case, is to provide some sort of collector, rain barrels if you will, for collecting the ideas, something not too intimidating (just in case original thought gets scared staring at blankness), yet nimble enough to handle a flood of ideas, if it’s a gullywasher.
Typical rain barrels are pencil and notebook, marker board and marker, or computer screen and poised fingers: whichever is most likely to both encourage and capture the output of your brain.
Fill the Barrel
The second order of business is to let your mind generate lots of options. Feel free to record any area you think would benefit from attention in a cycle way. By doing so, you’ll keep ideas flowing and you’ll have them all “on paper” and preserved for future consideration. Certainly feel free to add other ideas to the list as you think of them. That is what a notebook is for: to build your supply of ideas to think about and to handle during oversight times.
BUT, whatever you ultimately end up recording on your brainstorming sheet, for this first cycle project, limit your “final contestants” to areas under your personal oversight.
Put Yourself First, or at least Put Your Personal Oversight First
Think of it this way: if our goal is to attend to all our priorities, the priorities most likely to NOT get the attention they require for a life of accrued benefits are the personal oversight area:
- spiritual disciplines
- maintaining our personal spaces
- personal routines (morning and evening routines, devotional and exercise)
- character weaknesses
- personal enrichment and/or education
- personal ambitions/dreams
- personal wardrobe
- personal finances
In short, all the life areas that make up en suite in our stewardship world. So, compile every idea while brainstorming, but when it comes to selecting a project, select something personal. In other words, do not choose, “build a cleaning routine for my whole house” this time around. Instead, decide to attend to “my personal living space,” i. e. your bedroom (and bath, if you have one that’s “yours”).
What happens after you fill a page with possible ideas—or what to do if you sit and stare at a blank page and nothing happens is coming, but first, a example of cycles in action.
Priority Stewardship 
This is great advice for brainstorming! I’ve found that with my own brainstorming, I often become to rigid or limit my creative options because I immediately want a narrow list. But when I truly let my mind open up and spew out whatever it wishes, I come up with even better ideas than I anticipated.
Yes. Sorting can always come after the fact. Trashing can always come after the fact. Re-arranging can always come after the fact. Recopying and checking spelling can always come after the fact. But in the moment, just record.