What are your options when you’re stuck for creative ideas to solve a problem you’re facing? One powerful way is to “reframe” it – to view it from a different perspective. The ability to do so is a critical skill for getting ahead in your career today.

In his popular creativity book, Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content, author Mark Levy describes a methodology for freewriting that can be used to sidestep your brain’s built-in censor to get at your best ideas. He recommends that you write quickly whatever comes to your mind, no matter how unformed or ridiculous it may seem, for a specific amount of time. It are these raw, uncensored thoughts, recorded at your pace at which your brain works, that often contain the seeds of some truly valuable ideas.

In the book, Levy shares 36 powerful questions you can use to jump-start your thinking when you get stuck for creative solutions:

• What was I thinking here?
• How else can I say that?
• How can I make this exciting?
• How can I add value?
• What else can I say about this subject?
• Why am I stuck at this particular point?
• How can I get unstuck?
• What am I missing here?
• What am I wrong about here?
• Why?
• How can I prove that?
• How can I disprove that?
• What do I think about that?
• If I continue to think that way, what might happen?
• What other problems like this one have I experienced?
• What solutions can I borrow from past problems that can be applied to this current one?
• What does this remind me of?
• What’s the best-case scenario?
• What’s the worst-case scenario?
• What am I doing right?
• What am I doing brilliantly?
• How can I jump the track?
• Which strengths of mine (or my company’s) can I apply?
• Which weaknesses need to be compensated for?
• Where’s the proof that that statement is true?
• How am I the wrong person for this project?
• How am I the right person for this project?
• How would an arbitrator judge that?
• If I wanted to make a big mistake here, what would I do?
• What data do I need that I don’t yet have?
• How can I better use the data I already have?
• How would I describe the situation to the CEO?
• How would I describe it to my mother?
• How would I describe it to my most supportive friend?
• How would I describe it to a disinterested stranger?

The next time you’re brainstorming with a pen and paper or in front of your computer screen and you get stuck for creative ideas, why not select several of the questions from this list and see where they lead your thinking?