People in the room stop brainstorming and go do other work
Oh right, I can't do that.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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Me in meetings:
Other people talking = dozen of awesome relevant ideas running through my brain.
When other people ask me for my awesome ideas = crickets
Notebook
If you ask me what my favorite X is, I immediately forget 90% of things I like and become the Family Feud answer board. I can think of all the TV shows I keep meaning to watch while I'm at work, but the moment I get home I'm like "Man, I wish there were some good TV shows I could watch. I could really go for getting immersed in a series. Too bad nothing like that exists."
I can spin up 3 instances of myself talking to each other in my head! Take that neurotypicals!
Pros: they never stop coming up with ideas and thoughts
Cons: they never stop coming up with ideas and thoughts
That's um disassociative identity disorder not ADHD.... You might want to see a shrink.
That's exactly what the voices in my head said too... Wait you aren't one of the voices leaking to the outside again are you?
Fun social psych fact: research has shown group brainstorming to be an overall process loss. You're better off brainstorming alone and bringing your ideas to the table individually, ADHD or otherwise.
Lots of reasons why, but you can imagine some of the obvious ones, like only one person being able to speak at once, or groupthink issues where a person or group dominates the process.
"Brainstorming" is what you force ppl to do when they would absolutely not do it diligently on their own & just stubbornly repeat "idk, I have no ideas".
So you take them out of their environment (off-site preferably) & force them to think about shit.
It's also a shitty job to moderate such a group or take notes/main points to later develop.
You're trading variety and mental capacity for direction and group cohesion right? If you have a good leader who can set good themes, or a group that gets into disagreements, then a group discussion setting might turn 20, potentially off-topic or divisive ideas into 5 on-topic, agreeable ideas. But yeah, if you have the time for individual research, then that can be valuable as well.
Eh, agreeable ideas are boring ideas. On anything creative, I'd rather have something divisive with character than something corporate and filed-down.
Well, that same concept but I demand that ppl get prepared beforehand ('send me an email with 5 actually viable suggestions & prepare data if necessary/applicable/reasonably feasible').
That way ppl don't wander off, don't suggest (as) stupid shit (as they otherwise would) that wound obviously lead nowhere + they get group feedback to workshop (or not) the idea further.
Yeah thats a fair way to go about it. There's also the argument that the iteration loop will be faster in person than over email. It could take a week for everyone so send in their 5 ideas, where as a meeting could do it in 15-30 minutes. Every team has their own working style.
Yes, but iteration loop is faster only if folk is pre-prepared (it's not the first time they are thinking about the issues on the actual brainstorming b session).
Otherwise it's slower (bcs it takes everyone's time instead of just one person's).
You just spend minutes waiting for them to figure out why several suggestions are a non-starter for the most obvious reasons even to them.
For the 'iteration loop' to work properly you need a good starring point, a prototype of sorts (or several) for the group to workshop forward faster (conceptually speaking).
Not just timewise, but objective-wise too.
For most ppl such meetings are fairly taxing and time is limited so spending time on the meeting on something they could have easily figured out on their own hurts the success/quality rate.
But yes, each team/subject/industry/working environment is different, so my experience is just anecdotal data.
It could take a week for everyone so send in their 5 ideas
That's just them not willing to do it, a week of thinking would produce amazing results.
Yeah good points. I think the majority of most people's experience with team environments are some MBA or branch manager bossing around strangers, so that's why those sorts of meetings are so misused/overused.
I think face-to-face engagement does help with breaking people out of their bubbles and change priorities, but maybe that's just the way I socialize personally or ADHD or something. I'm not really gonna care much about somebody else's idea unless theres some personal engagement and goodwill. There's also a million other things that I have to do, so I might not send my reply until I've had a quiet moment to really think about it and get into a Google rabbit hole.
But yeah sometimes the team really doesn't give a fuck about the goal you're trying to set lol. Good leaders know that you shouldn't force engagement for that.
This, but Omni Man is talking to himself.
Brainstorm: You spin me right round, baby, right round