During this exercise, do not let yourself start judging the quality of your ideas. The goal here is to generate a ton of raw materials, knowing you won't write about 90% of them. After this exercise, you will emerge with crystal clear clarity for the next few days of writing, which is all you need to get started.
Step 1: The 2 Year Test Finding the general topics you want to write about starts with asking yourself 1 simple question: "What are all of the problems I've solved and topics I've learned about over the last 2 years?" Why 2 years? Good question. One of the biggest mistakes beginner writers make is thinking they have to be an "expert" to write about something. But this is wrong. The truth is, people don't want to learn from experts. They prefer to learn from those just a few steps ahead of them on the same path. And once you realize this, it's a huge creative unlock.
You do need to be an expert in a topic to write about it - but you simply need to tweak the topic by adding specificity to match your level of credibility.
Now, you're going to take your topics and add a level of specificity that makes the audience you're writing to the same person you were 2 years ago before you solved the problem.
You are adding a level of specificity to your topic that makes your target audience the person you were 2 years ago.
When you start writing about your first idea (that idea that jumped right off the page), it's going to feel effortless. And in the process of writing, more ideas are going to jump into your head. When you hit publish on this idea, the market feedback is going to generate even more ideas (if you’re paying attention to the questions, critiques, engagement, resonance, etc.)
Your next step is to take your topics and run them through the 4A Framework to generate headlines and ideas to write about. I'll introduce you to the 4A framework, then show you some examples how I used it. You can express each of your topics in 4 ways: Actionable (here's how) Analytical (here are the numbers) Aspirational (yes, you can) Anthropological (here's why)
Remember – no judgment during this phase. Get all of your ideas out there, because we want as much raw material as possible for the last step: choosing 3 ideas.
Pick 3 ideas. That's it. Your next 3 days of content.