Going Deep Instead of Wide - The Idea Tree Framework

The pain point I hear many writers struggle with is how to start something fresh. How does one go from the emptiness of a fresh page to the beginnings of a piece one can be excited about?

I can relate more than I care to admit. Too many times, I find myself knowing the general overview of what I want to discuss. A topic, an errant thought to tease into something substantial, and similar such woes. A gnawing feeling that I have more to say that won't translate from thought to word.

I have found that, as I develop my personal Content Castle, I don't hurt for ideas or topics, but rather the valuable core from within that I can share with others. I have gathered hundreds of thousands of words of information and truth from others, and then when the time comes for me to piece things together, I struggle.

And I hate that feeling. I feel discomfort knowing that I am the barrier between worthy tidbits for others and the perspective that makes it tenable for others.

I assume the same can be said for you, dear reader.

As a result, I've forced myself to get get out of my own way. Gone out for advice on how to go from broad topic to valuable core, and found the advice lacking.

Most of the advice I see out there for writers to brainstorm topics comes down to a volume game. I believe that advice is great for those that have truly nothing, but I don't think it's right for those that know their focus, but not their specific intention for a given writing session.

Beside, even if you can generate tens of ideas in as many minutes, it doesn't change the fact that a volume approach to brainstorming leaves you with general overviews of any given topic, let alone a means by which to break that topic down into its component pieces.

So, rather than join the masses screaming at you to go wide, I propose instead that we learn how to go deep into one idea instead.

The recurring problem I see with brainstorming techniques is the focus on volume of ideas.

I'm not going to suggest that the volume game is never the right move. Idea blitzes that let you get ideas for solutions, or story beats, and so on exercise your mind's plasticity. Those kinds of exercises help you look at things from different viewpoints, and therefore, look at problems more holistically.

However, I don't find that volume is the right play for understanding a topic. It makes more sense to take time with an idea, dissect it for its component parts, and study those parts for the value within the idea.

Think about it like this: say that you wanted to understand what the importance of a table of contents in books for a reader's ability to navigate said book. You look at the component parts of what a standard table of contents contains. You find in that review that many of these tables have chapter titles, section names, page numbers, and similar organizational structures.

Why? What does each of these facets of a table of contents do for the reader?

Well, the chapter and section titles categorize the information inside the book, helping new readers understand the topics they'll cover, and returning readers an easy table to skin to reference specific information. Page numbers make getting to that information easier. The index at the end helps the reader find specific keywords throughout the text.

It's a basic example, but I hope you see what even a cursory review of something can do to understanding how something works. Deeper dives into the design of something like this makes it possible for you to understand it, and therefore teach it to others. For those of us trying to share our insights with others, this skill is invaluable.

So, with that basic example understood, the question then becomes: how does this ability to more complex systems? How would someone go from a messy workflow to a system, or a vague understanding to clarity, and be able to explain it?

I had the visual concept for this approach before I knew its specific parts. I knew a tree, with deep roots and wide branches, was the imagery I wanted to invoke for this framework because I believed it to be the best visual representation of what deep understanding of a topic is.

The roots, your ideas, provide the foundation and support. The trunk is composed of the ordering process you take your ideas through, where ideas sort and funnel into concrete plans. Branches reach out, interweaving to create the canopy of leaves.

I recognize the floweriness of that last paragraph, and I apologize for none of it. I want this to stick out in your mind, and the embellishment will help with that.

The crux of what I'm saying is that I want your ideas to be firm and tall like old trees. I want them to be part of a larger forest of systems and clarity that you create for yourself, and I believe the five steps of ideation, ordering, branching, systemization, and meaning-making are the way to do so.

The Idea Tree starts at the roots, which you seed with your mind's understanding of the topic at hand. This part of the system will feel familiar to any other volume-focused brainstorming you've done in the past, but focused on one topic rather than a broad range blast of ideas.

Start by writing down everything you can think about for your given topic. Pick something you know a lot about, or something you're interested in if need help getting inspired.

Regardless of whether you are trying to break down a system, invent one, or just look for a pattern within your given topic, pick something and start breaking it down into component parts.

We're not interested making determinations on value or relatedness here. We're just committing parts of the whole onto the page.

Ask yourself a few questions to get these ideas out of your head and onto the page:

For example, let's say that you're talking about write a chapter for a book. You might talk about the warm-up you as the writer take to get into the mindset for writing a chapter for your book. You might jot down your computer/laptop as the main tool you utilize, with other considerations for things like music, timers, and so on. You might mention your office, or coffee shop you visit when you write.

The goal here is to lay everything out and see all the parts unattached to each other, waiting to be reassembled.

With your components laid out, the next step is piecing everything back together into chronological order. The goal for this step is to lay bare the order someone must take to navigate through your topic to understand all its components.

I say "chronological" as the operative word because I want this ordering to be with respect to time as well as logic. It should be clear, as you order everything from your ideation step, that there is one route through the components that touches on all the facets of your topic you laid out.

If you need help, think about some of these questions:

If you find that there's no temporal relation between something you wrote down and any of the other components, then you can disregard it.

In the chapter writing example, I might look at the workflow laid out before me and notice I need to arrive at my work environment first (the office or coffee shop from earlier, for instance). I then need to set up my tools, which might be the computer I write on, the software I use, and other hardware I utilize, like headphones for music.

This ordering process is about creating this flow where I go from the start state to the end state without experiencing roadblocks.

With the order of your topic laid out, you create the foundation for you to see deeper into a topic than most tend to go. While many people can explain the order they take through a given task or topic, they can't explain why. I would argue everyone is like this for some facet of their lives.

Regardless, the goal here is to interconnect your identified facets, laid out in order as they are, to show how steps at different ends of the chain support each other. If you can't think of how to start with this step, try some of these questions you can ask:

In our chapter writing example, the creation of branches here would be understanding how the pieces relate to each other. Maybe I choose the office or the coffee shop because it provides my preferred ambient noise or activity for my mind to focus. My computer is a device I choose because it's all I had available, or maybe it's a tool I built myself for this purpose.

Branching is a complicated, lengthy step in this process because we've moved beyond listing and linear mental movement. At this step, you create a web of interconnected nodes that show how everything you wrote out connects with itself.

In other words, you're developing your understanding of the topic as you laid it out, and therefore the systemic flow you take through it. That process is the foundation for creating something repeatable and teachable.

At this point, you have identified everything you can, aid out its order, and understand how all those parts fit together within, across, up and down the process. Whether you realize it or not, you've laid out a system that you partake in for that topic.

And now that you have a system, you have something that's teachable.

Most Internet gurus would tell you at this point to name your system and sell it. That's great for branding, but superfluous for communicating with people about what you know, so unless you're interested in packaging all this up into a neat little system to sell online, I'd worry more about laying everything out first.

At this step, you have everything you need to outline your understanding of your topic. While I will advocate that you write something with it, you're free to do what ever you want with it at this point.

But, if you want some guidance on systemizing what you outline, try some of these:

Finally, the last piece before you can share this with others: what was the point of all this? Why would someone care about what you laid out over this exercise. Especially figure out the answer to that question for someone who would otherwise have no interest in what you outlined.

The goal here isn't to criticize what you made, to tear it down right after erecting it. Instead, you should be thinking about this outline not as a system, or a topic deep dive, but rather a means with which to communicate to other people.

I advocate for this step because I remember what it was like in school, for instance. Where lazy teachers didn't have to get you excited or interested in the subject matter. They had your attention, or at least your attendance, regardless of whether you liked it or not, and therefore had no incentive to make you want to learn.

But it works differently on the Internet. Here, you have to grab attention and convince people that what you have to say is worth their time. The next distraction comes up right after yours if you don't.

So, rather than creating something and leaving it there, you need to understand why someone else would care in the first place. Relate your topic back to something that matters to most people, like relationships or health.

It's partly how I try to communicate my thoughts on writing, for example. I felt that writing was a boon for people my whole life, but I couldn't explain it until I understood the underlying psychology of what writing does for people. The ordering effect it has on the mind, and therefore the clarity it provides to a regular practitioner.

That's the mindset I want you to have as you look to tie your topic into the greater landscape of human communication. What benefits will people have from knowing what you know? That's a level of understanding fewer people get to experience as the pace of the world increases, making you, and thus your point of view, that much more valuable.

I make no claims that this system perfect. Like anything else I make, I don't assign a system to people, but rather present what I think is one version of the way I think the process works. I care far more about your ability to run through the big idea than I do about strict adherence to the steps as I lay them out.

This belief I have is because I recognize that, even as a system-oriented guy, I don't follow the rules all the time. If I don't find a given step in a process to be worth my time, I skip over it, or condense it down into another step.

Take this system, for instance. In reality, with the way my mind works, I don't have discrete barriers between ordering and branching in my Idea Tree Framework. When I am sorting through the discrete parts of a topic, I don't sort through them without automatically thinking about their relationship with other ideas I write down. My mind constantly turns over the function and relationships of these ideas, trying to piece things together in a way that brings value or new insights.

For anyone that's implemented the things I talk about, you've probably noticed similar deviations in how I outline things and how your workflow turns out to be. I don't care, as long as you write about what you care about.

There's more to all of this than just the understanding, the steps you've taken to understand your topic. I seek to tie what I work on into the greater picture, and this system is no different.

I tend to leave these kinds of conversations for my essays on Substack and Medium, but it bears repeating here as well. I believe the material I present to you is more than just a productivity hack you can take with you into your work. I want these systems to make it clear that, not only are there ways to improve as a writer, but also as a person.

Look back to the process outlined above. How we broke down not just my approach to delving deep into a topic, but also the specific example I gave that lead to a system I needed to get my writing output up.

Do you notice how that can apply to more than just the smaller frame of writing productivity? How, with careful consideration, anything broad in life can be atomized into pieces, and reconstructed into a way that benefits how you work, and who you are?

These systems focus on writing because that's my passion, but tying things together into a bigger scope to benefit others is my purpose. One leads to the other.

Because, once understood to this depth, you can now do more than just talk about a given topic. You can teach others, pass that knowledge down to others, and thereby proliferate something valuable to others with efficacy and intention.

In other words, you achieve what many seek: to understand, and thereby, be better understood. To connect everything together in way that creates a you that is a greater whole than the sum of its parts.

I believe writing is the means by which mankind will continue to communicate more as technology develops, as online media continues to drive attention and dominate as the public square of the current century.

Mastering your ability to understand and create value will be one of the key skills in standing out among that flood of content.