How to Turn a Blank Page Into a Brilliant Idea: 10 Outrageous (But Effective) Tricks

We’ve all been there: staring at a blank page, willing it to fill itself with brilliance. Spoiler alert—it never does. Ideas, those elusive little devils, need coaxing. Luckily, we’ve rounded up ten truly extraordinary ways to get your creative juices flowing. Warning: some of these might make your coworkers raise an eyebrow.

1. Reverse-Engineer Your Genius

Start with the answer and work backward. What does your ideal outcome look like? Need a campaign for eco-friendly shampoo? Picture the award-winning ad, then trace the breadcrumbs back to how you got there.

2. Make Strange Bedfellows

Great ideas often come from odd pairings. Think chocolate and chili, or TikTok and sea shanties. Smash two unrelated concepts together and see what happens.

3. Walk It Out

Stanford researchers found that walking boosts creativity by 60%. So take your problem on a stroll. Bonus points if you mutter to yourself like a mad scientist.

4. Channel Your Inner Child

Ask ridiculous “what if” questions. What if cats ran banks? What if chairs could talk? Absurdity can lead to genius—or at least a good laugh.

5. Go Full MacGyver

Force constraints on yourself. Create something amazing with just five dollars, three hours, and an old shoelace. Limitations spark creativity faster than an open budget.

6. Steal Without Shame

Borrow ideas from other fields. Fashion can inspire architecture. Music can influence tech. (We see you, Tesla Cybertruck, looking like an 80s music video prop.)

7. Shake Up Your POV

Solve the problem as if you were someone else. What would Beyoncé do with this tagline? How would Elon Musk redesign this app? (Hopefully without rockets.)

8. Randomize Everything

Flip to a random book page or Google a word generator. Use whatever pops up as a jumping-off point. Who knew “marshmallow” could inspire a pillow company tagline?

9. Make the Impossible Possible

Imagine there are no limits—no budgets, no laws of physics, no Debbie from accounting. Picture the craziest solution, then pull it back to something (mostly) achievable.

10. Brainstorm Like a Chaos Goblin

Collaborate with friends or colleagues using the rule of “yes, and.” No idea is too weird, no suggestion is off-limits. One person’s bad idea can be another’s lightbulb moment.

Creativity isn’t about waiting for lightning to strike. It’s about dancing in the rain until it does. So, get weird. Get wild. The best ideas don’t come from staring at a blank screen—they come from turning it upside down.