Name 500 uses for a paperclip: starting out

As I start out on the classic brainstorming challenge about naming as many uses for a paperclip as possible, there are a number of preliminary stages that I consider:

Switching to present moment awareness
Stating the creative directive
Stepping up the concept level
Naming/Listing

Switching to present moment awareness

Instead of rushing into the exercise of creating uses for the paperclip I can start out by considering present moment awareness. This takes the form:

Now Here Me Doing: creating 500 uses for a paperclip

The full benefits of this will be considered in a later post. But briefly, this information can be changed with the sentence restructuring technique to provide different insights into the challenge and maybe create some other challenges. I could rearrange the information to read:

Creating 500 uses for a paperclip is being done here now by me.

With "me" as the focus word I could consider alternatives such as asking others to participate in the project, etc.

Stating the creative directive

The creative directive reads:

Create 500 uses for a paperclip

As before, the sentence restructuring approach can provide variations or insights into the challenge. So if I rearranged the information to read:

There are 500 uses for a paperclip that you must create

then with "create" as the focus-word I can generate other alternatives such as:

List 500 uses for a paperclip
Find 500 uses for a paperclip
Improve 500 uses for a paperclip.

Stepping up the concept level and naming/listing