How I Stopped Waiting for Ideas and Started Collecting Problems

For a long time, I thought I needed to come up with ideas before I could build anything.

I’d sit down to make a tool, write an article, or plan a project and wait for inspiration. Most of the time, nothing came.

The problem wasn’t that I had no ambition. I was expecting ideas to appear from nowhere.

What helped was a small shift: I stopped trying to invent ideas and started collecting problems.

Ideas often start as friction

I used to imagine good ideas arriving like lightning: one sudden spark that changed everything.

But the things I’ve actually wanted to build usually began with a smaller feeling:

• A task taking more steps than it should.
• A tool missing the one feature I needed.
• The same question coming up again and again.
• An explanation that made a simple thing harder to understand.

Those moments are easy to dismiss. I used to shrug and move on.

Now I treat them as clues.

Keep a list of annoyances

When something feels unnecessarily difficult, I write it down.

I don’t try to design the solution right away. I just describe the friction:

• “This takes longer than it should.”
• “I keep doing this manually.”
• “I wish there were a simpler way to do this.”
• “I’ve explained this same thing several times.”

That’s the whole system. One note, one line at a time.

When I’m ready to start a project or write something new, I look through the list. Instead of facing a blank page, I have real problems I’ve already noticed.

Why this helps more than brainstorming

A brainstorming session can produce ideas that sound exciting but don’t connect to a problem you care about.

A friction list starts with something you’ve already experienced. You know what made the task frustrating, because you were the one dealing with it.

That doesn’t mean every annoyance needs an app, a tool, or a project. Some problems are too small, too specific, or not worth solving. But writing them down gives you something concrete to evaluate instead of asking yourself to invent a perfect idea on demand.

Try it for a week

Keep a note open on your phone or computer. For one week, whenever something feels more difficult than it needs to be, write it down.

Don’t judge the idea yet. Don’t plan the solution. Just capture the problem.

At the end of the week, read through your list. You may find a project worth building, a topic worth writing about, or a small improvement you can make right away.

I still don’t get ideas on command. I just don’t rely on a blank page to give them to me anymore.