If you’ve ever participated in brainstorming sessions, you know that is as much of an art as it is a science. And brainstorm for poll question ideas, the sessions take on a whole new dimension.

Learning how to brainstorm is easy. It may take everything you have to do it because it is brain-intensive, but usually the times are short and targeted.

The two main qualities in brainstorming is concentration and intense focus. You reject no ideas initially; you record them all. Write everything down or record the session. Use a whiteboard if necessary.

Not to belabor the point, but don’t reject the ideas initially just because you think it’s an irrelevant idea or doesn’t have value. rejection will come later when you get a birdseye view of what you’ve actually written down. As much as possible, increase the positive flow of information.

Sessions last from five or ten minutes to a full week (the website Twitter was formed out of a brainstorming session that lasted an entire day). Your sessions should be intense and focused. But those five or ten minute sessions should be very productive.

To get all you can out of a brainstorming session, try to create a free environment, one that is clutter-free and organized. Brainstorming sessions typically have groups of three to seven people. That’s the ideal. Keeping the group tiny helps to keep the focus clearer.

Now you throw in the idea of brainstorming for poll questions. You may not have the luxury of having three to seven in your brainstorming group. It may be just you! That’s quite alright.

Keep the sessions short and focused. Five to ten minutes at a time will generate a lot of ideas. Choose a general category: religion, politics, sports, current news, that sort of thing. You may want to focus even more: for religion, choose one. For sports, choose a particular sport, for current news or politics, choose a current problem.

Now you’re ready to sit down to make a brain dump and record. Here’s how a poll question brainstorming session could go: Sports leads to football, which leads to a team, which leads to the Chicago Bears, which leads to quarterbacks. From there you see if there’s anything in the sporting news about the Bears or Chicago quarterbacks. Then you tailor a question (especially if you are in the Chicago market) that talks about the Bears or quarterbacks.

As you do this, it becomes a lot easier. Be careful, though, this is an easy step to take shortcuts with. You may reveal several other questions that you can use. Ten minutes each time is all it takes.