The Birdsong Technique: An effective mechanism to continually generate ideas!
Birdsongs, I believe, are stressbusters engineered by nature. During my MBA at the University of Manchester, I would frequent a park close to my accommodation, especially during the spring and summer times, to listen to the birds chirping. I’ve never been an active bird watcher, but the magpies and the robins were slowly turning me into one.
Most of us like to listen to birdsongs, but, the true magic is unlocked when we try to isolate the sounds of each bird. We tend to see colour, trends and even more beauty within these songs. When we’re able to identify whether the songs originate from either a sparrow, a pigeon or a cuckoo bird, we flip a switch in our minds, and that’s what adds more colour and clarity to these songs.
We can basically apply the same concept to content creation.
As content consumers, we tend to treat everything we read, watch or listen to as purely content. A motivational YouTube video will inspire you to make the necessary habit changes and help you get closer to achieving the goals you’ve set out for yourself. A podcast will make you laugh or a great mystery novel will keep you on the edge of your seat.
However, when we flip the switch from being content consumers to content creators, we can identify multiple strands within the content we actively consume. We start seeing ideas right in front of our eyes. For instance, reading The Third Door by Alex Banayan inspired me to write my blog post titled, Network from home.
This technique is a great way to generate ideas, however, as David Allen, the productivity guru says, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them“. Every time a ‘birdsong’ helps generate an idea, it should be stored in either a notebook or a notes app on your phone. For me, I always rely on my favourite note-taking app, Notion. I have a ‘Ideas Homebase’ wherein I collect the ideas, which are then categorised and added into either ‘Video Ideas’ or ‘Blog post Ideas’. It’s been a great way of maintaining consistency in content creation.
Interestingly, this blog post has been heavily inspired by Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. I highly recommend this book if you’ve started or want to start your content creation journey.