Hi, this is Ray.

I want to start with a confession that took me a long time to admit. For about ten years, I had a reflexive contempt for brainstorming as a concept. The image that came to mind when someone said "let's brainstorm" was a corporate conference room, a whiteboard, a facilitator trying to convince eight tired adults to "think outside the box," sticky notes accumulating on a wall, and an output of generic ideas that everyone in the room had already thought of and that nobody would actually act on. The performance of creativity without any of the substance. I'd sit through these sessions, contribute the minimum to seem cooperative, and quietly resent the time.

What I didn't realize, until I started actually reading the research, is that I'd been judging "brainstorming" based on a particular bad version of it. The corporate ritual I was reacting to is, in fact, well-documented in the research as not particularly effective. But that's not the whole story of brainstorming. Done well (and the research is fairly specific about what "done well" means) structured idea generation is one of the more powerful learning tools available. It improves academic outcomes. It builds cognitive flexibility. It produces deeper learning than passive consumption of material can. The bad version I'd been judging on isn't representative of the technique. It's a specific failure mode that good practice avoids.

Today's newsletter is about that. The honest research on brainstorming as a learning tool… what actually works, what doesn't, and how to use idea generation to support your learning rather than to waste time pretending to be creative. We're going to kill some myths along the way, including some that the popular productivity content has been promoting for decades. Let's get into it.

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Let me start with the big finding, because it's stronger than I'd expected when I went looking.

A 2025 meta-analysis examining the impact of brainstorming technique on academic achievement and creative thinking found substantial effects across many studies. According to the researchers, the brainstorming technique enables students to actively use their cognitive skills, solve problems analytically, support their critical thinking, and think creatively. The main purpose is to enable students to participate more actively, to help them learn more easily, to support teamwork, to facilitate idea generation, and to make the learning environment enjoyable. When applied properly in educational settings, brainstorming produces measurable improvements in both academic achievement and creative thinking. The effects are real. The technique works.

A separate study on brainstorming in educational contexts identified specific cognitive effects. According to the researchers, the effects of the brainstorming technique on cognitive skills include making lessons attention-grabbing, developing critical thinking skills, providing meaningful learning, enabling one to look at things from different perspectives, reinforcing what's been learnt, providing retention in learning, ensuring recall and repetition of learning, keeping learners active in class, increasing academic achievement, and enabling the generation of ideas based on daily life experiences. That list is unusually broad. Brainstorming doesn't just produce more ideas. It engages cognitive processes that support multiple distinct aspects of learning.

But (and this is where the research gets interesting) not all brainstorming produces these benefits. The conventional group brainstorming I'd been judging on has known failure modes, and the more effective versions look different.

The honest part of the research, which doesn't get talked about as much, is that the classic version of brainstorming (a group of people sitting in a room shouting out ideas) isn't actually very effective. Researchers have documented this for decades, but the practice continues anyway because it FEELS productive even when it isn't.

According to research on brainstorming effectiveness, the processes of idea generation and idea evaluation are neurologically distinct and can interfere with each other if done at the same time. If people start evaluating ideas too early, they're engaging executive control and shutting down the free-flowing default mode that supplies raw creative thoughts. This is the original Osborn principle of "defer judgment," and the research confirms it has neurological reality. The brain regions that generate novel ideas are partly inhibited by the brain regions that evaluate ideas. When groups do both simultaneously, both functions degrade.

There's another problem with traditional group brainstorming that the research has documented extensively: production blocking. When one person is talking, others have to wait. While they wait, they often lose the ideas they had, or they self-censor those ideas, or they shift to attending to the speaker instead of generating. The net effect is that group brainstorming sessions usually produce fewer total ideas than the same number of people would have produced individually, working separately. The group setting LOOKS productive because everyone's engaged. The output is actually worse.

A practical implication has been worked out. According to one summary, individuals brainstorming alone, and then sharing/combining ideas, often produced more and better ideas than the same number of people brainstorming together in a free-for-all. In one study at a tech company, teams using a brainwriting approach generated 37% more ideas than those who first worked together. The combined approach (individual idea generation first, then group integration) consistently outperforms traditional group-only brainstorming. The sequence matters. The individual work isn't separate from the collaboration; it's what makes the collaboration effective.

Now the constructive part. Effective brainstorming (the kind that produces the learning benefits the meta-analyses have documented) looks fairly different from the corporate meeting version. Several specific features matter.

Separation of generation from evaluation. This is the most important one. Generation and evaluation are different cognitive activities. Mixing them shuts both down. The effective brainstorming process has a clear generation phase (where ALL ideas are welcomed, no matter how rough or unlikely) followed by a separate evaluation phase, where the ideas get assessed. The temporal separation lets each cognitive mode operate fully.

For solo learning, this looks like: take 15 minutes to generate ideas about something you're studying, with the explicit rule that you won't judge any of them yet. Just produce. Quantity over quality. Then, after the generation phase, return to the list and start evaluating… what makes sense, what doesn't, what connects to what else you know, what raises new questions. The two phases are different activities. Don't do them at once.

Individual work first, then combination. Whether you're learning alone or with others, the most effective sequence usually starts with individual idea generation. According to the research on this, a recent study supports the idea that group brainstorming is most beneficial after individual brainstorming, allowing initial ideas to be generated in an unconstrained fashion, and thereafter the group setting facilitates additional ideas due to stimulating from group members. The individual work produces the seed material. The group work expands and combines it. Reversed, the group dynamics often suppress the individual generation that would have happened. Done in order, both phases contribute.

Explicit quantity goals. Effective brainstorming has explicit goals about how many ideas to generate. "Come up with 20 ideas about this" produces more learning than "come up with some ideas about this." The number forces you past the obvious initial thoughts into the less obvious ones. The first 5 ideas are usually unsurprising. Ideas 15-20 are where the real cognitive work happens. Without the quantity target, most learners stop after the easy ideas and never reach the productive territory.

Time pressure (but not too much). Effective brainstorming often involves a specific time limit… say, 10 minutes for the generation phase. The constraint forces you to keep producing rather than over-thinking each idea. Too much time and the evaluation impulse creeps back in. Not enough time and you don't reach the productive territory beyond the obvious. The sweet spot, in my experience, is around 10-15 minutes for generation phases.

Building on others' ideas (when in groups). When brainstorming in groups, the explicit instruction to BUILD on previous ideas (saying "yes, and..." rather than offering completely disconnected new thoughts) dramatically improves the output. This is the technique that improvisational comedy uses, and it transfers well to learning contexts. As one of the foundational brainstorming research findings showed, exposure to a high number of ideas and to common ideas enhanced the generation of additional ideas. The ideas of others prime new ideas in you, but only if you're using them as scaffolding rather than as competition.

Beyond just producing ideas, brainstorming engages specific cognitive processes that support learning in measurable ways. Let me name them.

Active retrieval of existing knowledge. When you brainstorm about a topic, you're forced to actively retrieve everything you currently know about it. This is the same testing effect I've covered in previous newsletters… retrieval strengthens memory. Brainstorming about a subject you're learning is, among other things, a powerful form of active recall.

Connection-making between concepts. Brainstorming tends to surface unexpected connections between ideas. When you're generating freely, your mind creates associations that disciplined thinking wouldn't. These associations are often where genuine understanding lives. As one analysis noted, from a cognitive perspective, brainstorming is essentially an exercise in divergent thinking… generating many varied ideas in response to an open-ended problem. The divergent thinking is what produces the connections.

Identification of gaps in your understanding. When you try to generate ideas about a topic and can't, that's information. The blank space in your brainstorm reveals what you don't yet know. You can then specifically target those gaps in your subsequent study. The brainstorm becomes a diagnostic tool, surfacing what would otherwise stay invisible.

Engagement with material that passive study can't produce. Reading about a subject is one mode of engagement. Brainstorming about it is a much more active mode. Your brain has to do more work, which produces deeper encoding. As the meta-analysis noted, the brainstorming technique relates to information processing theory, where the activation of prior knowledge and the association of new ideas promote deeper learning and memory retention. The active engagement is doing work that passive reading doesn't.

Cognitive flexibility development. Brainstorming forces you to consider multiple perspectives, frameworks, and approaches simultaneously. Over time, this practice develops the cognitive flexibility I covered in a previous newsletter… the general capacity to shift between mental frameworks that supports almost every kind of advanced learning.

Better long-term retention. The combination of active retrieval, connection-making, and engagement produces retention that passive study can't match. The brainstorm isn't separate from the studying. It's a particularly potent form of it.

Okay, the practical part. Based on the research and on my own experience experimenting with this for several years, here's how to actually use brainstorming as a learning tool.

Brainstorm before you study new material. Before reading a chapter or starting a lesson, take 10 minutes to brainstorm everything you already know or think about the topic. Generate freely. This activates prior knowledge, surfaces existing beliefs (including wrong ones), and primes your brain to engage with the new material. The subsequent study is more effective because your mind is already in the topic's territory.

Brainstorm after you study to consolidate. After learning new material, brainstorm everything you can remember about it without looking at notes. This is active recall combined with idea generation. You're not just trying to remember what was said… you're trying to generate connections, applications, examples, and questions. The post-study brainstorm consolidates the learning in a way that just rereading notes can't.

Brainstorm when you're stuck. When you're struggling with a problem, formal idea generation often produces breakthroughs that direct attempts don't. Generate 20 possible approaches, even ones you suspect are wrong. The wrong approaches often illuminate what the right approach might look like. The quantity reveals the structure of the problem.

Use brainwriting instead of group brainstorming when you have collaborators. As the research shows, individual idea generation in writing, followed by combination and discussion, outperforms classic group brainstorming. If you're learning with others, structure your collaboration this way. Generate alone, share in writing, build together. Avoid the standing-around-a-whiteboard model.

Set explicit targets and time limits. "Generate 20 ideas in 10 minutes" produces dramatically more useful brainstorms than "let's think about this for a while." The structure forces you past the obvious and into the productive territory.

Defer judgment ruthlessly during generation. When you're generating, the rule is no evaluation. Bad ideas are welcomed. Obviously wrong ideas are welcomed. Stupid ideas are welcomed. The evaluation comes later. The discipline of suspending judgment during generation is hard but essential.

Write everything down. The act of writing makes your thinking visible to yourself, which often surfaces ideas you didn't know you had. Brainstorming verbally, in your head, is dramatically less productive than brainstorming on paper or in a document. The externalization is part of the cognitive work.

Use questions, not just topics. Brainstorming around a question ("how could I apply this concept?") usually produces more useful output than brainstorming around a topic ("this concept"). The question gives your brain a direction to push against. The topic alone is too open-ended.

Combine with mind mapping for deeper integration. As I covered in a previous newsletter, mind maps are excellent tools for organizing what you've generated. Brainstorm first, then map the results. The brainstorm produces the raw material. The map organizes it into something usable.

Honest section. Not all learning situations benefit from brainstorming. Knowing the limits helps you use the tool appropriately.

For pure memorization. When you need to memorize specific facts, dates, definitions, or technical details, brainstorming isn't the right tool. Use flashcards, spaced repetition, and other memorization-specific techniques.

When you don't have any prior knowledge. Brainstorming requires raw material to work with… existing knowledge, intuitions, fragments of understanding. If you know absolutely nothing about a topic, brainstorming will produce mostly noise. Read or study first to build some foundation, then brainstorm.

For very narrow, well-defined problems. Brainstorming is best for open-ended, exploratory thinking. If a problem has a single correct answer that's reachable through direct analysis, brainstorming may waste time you could spend on the analysis.

When the goal is to learn from authority. Some learning involves absorbing what an expert knows. The brainstorm-everything-you-already-think approach can actually be counterproductive here, because it cements your prior assumptions before you've had a chance to update them. Sometimes you need to receive, not just generate.

Here's what I want you to take from all this. The popular framing of brainstorming has done it a disservice. The corporate meeting version is genuinely not very effective, and a lot of thoughtful people have written it off because of that experience. But the underlying technique… structured idea generation in service of understanding… is one of the more powerful learning tools available, when it's done right.

The key features that distinguish effective brainstorming from the wasteful version are knowable and practical. Separate generation from evaluation. Do individual work before group work. Set explicit quantity targets. Use time limits. Defer judgment during generation. Write everything down. Use questions as prompts. These aren't dramatic interventions. They're small structural changes that convert idea generation from performative ritual into actual cognitive work.

For learners specifically, brainstorming offers something that passive consumption of material can't: active engagement with what you already know and what you're trying to learn. The brain in active generation mode encodes differently than the brain in receiving mode. The connections formed during brainstorming sessions tend to be the ones that stick. The gaps surfaced during brainstorming sessions are the ones that subsequent study can actually fill.

If you've dismissed brainstorming as corporate theater (and I did, for years) please consider that the dismissal might have been based on a bad version of the technique. The good version, used as a tool in your actual learning rather than as a performance, can change how much you extract from the material you're already engaging with. The cost is low. The benefit is real. Try it on something you're currently learning. See what shows up.

You're not generating ideas to feel productive. You're using your own mind as a tool to dig deeper into material that passive study would have left unexamined. The mining is the point. The output is the byproduct. Both are valuable.

Even Frodo and Sam brainstormed in Mordor. They didn't call it that. But the conversations about how to get past the watcher, how to climb the path, how to handle Gollum… those were ideation sessions. The ones who eventually got to Mount Doom were the ones who could think together about hard problems. The technique is older than the productivity industry. The productivity industry just gave it a bad name. Reclaim it. Use it well.

Keep learning (and keep generating ideas),

Ray