One quick heads up on this section: there's a lot here! So if you can't get to it all, don't worry. The Endless Idea Generator is the topic of our second live session next Tuesday. The hardest part of the Ship 30 for 30 challenge is, without question, feeling like you have nothing to write about.

To write consistently for 30 days, you need ideas. And you need to treat them as precious commodities. This means setting up systems to capture these ideas EVERYWHERE.

You want to make sure that any time an essay idea pops up, you can capture it. Because trust me, when you start writing every day for 30 days, ideas will flood your brain.

But you need to act on them quickly. So here are a few ways to be ready!

Creating an Idea Log

Every tweet, essay, blog post, podcast, or newsletter you consume on a daily basis becomes a potential inspiration source for your own writing.

Your Idea Log can be a Notes folder on your phone or laptop. It can be a physical journal you keep on your desk. It can even be a string of DMs you send to yourself on Twitter. The point is: you need a place where you can save ideas you come across that are interesting—ideally with some sort of note to yourself as to what ideas came to mind when you saw it (you’ll likely forget later if you don’t write them down). The purpose of your Idea Log is to turn your minutes and hours spent consuming content online into opportunities to explore, discover, and ultimately create your own content.

Here are a few of our recommendations:

• On your phone, download the Drafts App for super quick capture. This syncs across all Apple devices. If you're on Android/Windows, any simple notes app will do.
• Keep a small notebook by your bed in case an idea strikes when you're reading or without your phone. Get a couple and keep another in your back pocket as well.
• Download otter.ai to start transcribing your conversations or to quickly capture ideas on the go

Then, at the end of every day, clear all of those ideas into one long file called "Atomic Essay ideas."

This ensures you have plenty of material to play with when using the Endless Idea Generator.

Creating Your (Rough) Content Strategy For The Next 30 Days

Content Buckets are overarching categories you feel inspired to write within.

For example, Personal Development is a content bucket. Finance is a content bucket. Writing Advice is a content bucket. Choose 3 (and only 3, to start, otherwise you’ll feel like you’re chasing too many birds with one stone).

In The Art and Business of Online Writing, Nicolas Cole’s framework for creating your 3 content buckets is as follows:

• General Audience (Example: Productivity)
• Niche Audience (Example: Project Management Software, a niche within Productivity)
• Company/Industry (Example: The Future Of Productivity Software)

Quick note: The myth that you should only write about 1 thing and 1 thing only is false. Instead, use this General/Niche/Industry framework to give yourself a bit more flexibility, still be able to talk about your business, your products, etc., while also having the freedom to explore mass-appeal topics AND own your own category/niche.

List 3, 5, 10+ topics under each bucket.

Now that you have your 3 content buckets in front of you, it becomes a lot easier to brainstorm topics that fall under each one.

So, using the Endless Idea Generator, write down a handful of ideas under each content bucket.*Tip: Try to write each idea in a headline, and not just a description of the idea. Forcing yourself to write a headline for every idea pushes your thinking and really makes you think about what that specific piece would be about, if you were to write it.

For example:

General Audience (Example: Productivity):

• Why Productivity Hacks Don't Work (And What You Should Do Instead)
• 7 Ways To Become A More Productive Person Without Obsessively Tracking Everything You Do
• 10 Productivity Apps For Helping Employees Get More Accomplished Each Day

Niche Audience (Example: Project Management Software)

• 3 Big Mistakes Companies Make When Purchasing New Project Management Software Tools
• How Much Money Startups Waste Buying The Wrong Project Management Software
• Here's How Project Management Software Is Going To Automate Away 50% Of Management Jobs In The Next 20 Years

Industry Audience (Example: The Future of Productivity Software)

• 9 Ways Companies Are Invasively Starting To Tracking Employee Data
• By The Year 2050, Productivity Software Will Be One Of The Most Valuable Industries In The World. Here's Why
• Want To Live In The Future? Start Using These 3 Crazy Futuristic Productivity Apps

See how it works?

Now, if you're having trouble coming up with ideas, then we have just the answer for you.

The Endless Idea Generator

Step 1: The 4A FrameworkWhen most writers sit down to write, they usually say to themselves, "I want to write about X."

Well, X is usually a pretty broad topic. And there are lots of different ways of approaching X.

For example, let's say you sit down and say, "I want to write about achieving financial freedom." OK, well that's a pretty big topic—so how do you want to slice the pie? Do you want to explain to readers how they can start saving & investing money to achieve financial freedom (actionable)? Did you just read a study about financial freedom in the United States and do you want to explain what the numbers mean for people who are afraid they don't have enough money saved up for retirement (analytical)? Did you overcome a mountain of debt to become financially free yourself, and do you want to motivate others to do the same (aspirational)? Or do you want to explain to readers why the root cause of financial illiteracy, and why so many people struggle to achieve financial freedom, is because of the emotional relationship they have with money (anthropological)?

When you slow down and really break a topic down, you start to realize there isn't enough clarity in saying, "I want to write about X." And the reason so many writers sit down to write, only to give up 5 minutes later, is because this is the first BIG realization they have to confront. They thought they knew what they wanted to write about, only to get into the writing and realize, "Wait, there are a hundred different ways I could say this—and I don't know which one is right."

Which is why we encourage writers to start here, first.

Take your topic, and then challenge yourself to pick a direction.

• Actionable (here's how)
• Analytical (here are the numbers)
• Aspirational (yes, you can)
• Anthropological (here's why)

Step 2: Testing Different Proven ApproachesOnce you've chosen a direction, the second step is to figure out how you want to organize your writing.

• Is this a "How To" Atomic Essay? Then it should be organized in steps (Step 1, Step 2, etc...).
• Is this a "Lessons Learned" Atomic Essay? Then it should be organized in lessons (Lesson #1, Lesson #2, etc...).
• Is this a "Mistakes" Atomic Essay? Then it should be organized in mistakes (Mistake #1, Mistake #2, etc...).

The key here is to structure your piece in a way where all the main points & subheadings follow the same pattern. What you don't want to do is write a "How To" Atomic Essay, but then have your first main point be a "Step," and your second main point be a "lesson," and your third main point be a "mistake," etc. This makes it very hard for readers to know what they're reading and follow your train of thought. (Now, you can combine Steps, Mistakes, Lessons, etc., in each section, but how you ORGANIZE the piece should all follow the same overarching pattern.)

The other reason we encourage writers to make this decision at the beginning (before you even start writing) is because it will give you a skeleton to fill in.

After all, it's always harder to start writing with a 100% blank page.

It's much easier to create an outline (list out the 7 mistakes, or 5 steps, or 10 lessons you want to share) and then fill each one in with a story, example, or advice for the reader.

Step 3: Telling The Reader Your CredibilityThe big question readers ask themselves when opening a new piece is, "Where is this information coming from? Why should I trust you?"

The mistake writers make here (which keeps them from writing anything at all) is thinking they need to be some big, fancy expert in order to write about a subject. You don't. You don't need to be Tony Robbins or Jeff Bezos or Barack Obama. You just need to tell readers why you are writing what you're writing, and why they should consider your perspective on the subject.

There are three big ways to do this.

The first is to tell the reader why you actually are the expert—and do so explicitly. For example, if you are writing about real estate, and you've built a real estate portfolio (however big or small), you should tell readers, "Over the course of my career, I've bought and sold X number of buildings. And I want to teach you how you can buy and sell your first piece of real estate too." Writers struggle here because they fear talking about themselves will come off as "bragging" to readers, but it doesn't. Readers want context. They want to know why they should listen to you. And if you don't give them a reason, they're going to assume you have no idea what you're talking about.

The second is to tell the reader who the real expert is, and how you went out and curated their advice. If you want to write about real estate, but you aren't actually an expert on the subject, then the next-best thing you can do is go curate what other experts have said and make it easy for readers to find the information they're looking for. For example, go curate the 10 best pieces of real estate advice from industry leaders and share that. Then, tell readers, "I went out and found the 10 best pieces of real estate advice from industry leaders who have bought and sold more than $5 billion worth of real estate." Congrats! Now you're "the expert of curating real estate experts."

The third is to tell the reader you aren't an expert, but are just sharing something from personal experience. The simple fact you experienced something makes you an expert in it. You lived it. You know what it's like—what it feels like, smells like, tastes like, looks like, sounds like, etc. Which means, to anyone who hasn't experienced what you've experienced, you are "an expert." And they are ready to hear what you have to say on the topic.

Put It All Together: The Endless Idea Generator

4A + Proven Approach + Credibility = The Endless Idea GeneratorAll of a sudden, what originally started as "I have an idea" becomes "I have TOO MANY ideas."

With The Endless Idea Generator, you'll have the opposite problem: instead of not knowing what to write about, you'll experience "the burden of opportunity." You'll start seeing how easy it is to turn one thing into 100 things, and you'll never run out of things to write about again.

Just take a look at how many ideas we can engineer for a topic like "Quitting Your 9-5 To Pursue Your Dreams" using this framework:

• [Actionable + How To + I'm The Expert] I Just Quit My 9-5 And Doubled My Monthly Earnings. Here Are 5 Steps You Can Take To Do The Same
• [Analytical + How To + Curated Experts] A New Study Shows Millennials Are The Poorest Generation. Here's The Advice The 10 Biggest Financial Planners Gave About Saving For Retirement
• [Aspirational + How To + Personal Story] I Used To Have $150,000 Of Debt. Here's My Step-By-Step Guide For Achieving Financial Freedom—And How You Can Do It Too
• [Anthropological + How To + Curated Experts] Mark Cuban Just Said Something In An Interview With CNBC That Reveals The Real Reason So Many People Never Achieve Financial Freedom

And so on, and so on.

An Idea Capture system + your 3 content buckets + The Endless Idea Generator = a never-ending stream of ideas.

How easy is that?

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