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.

Brainstorming itself is easy enough to do. It may tax your mental capacity greatly, but usually brainstorming sessions are short and very focused.

The two main necessities in brainstorming are concentration and intensity. Don’t reject any ideas initially. Instead you’ll need to record them all so they can be used later. Use a whiteboard or a chalkboard if necessary.

To emphasize, you never reject an idea (initially) because it’s a bad idea or undoable. That comes later. The idea is to 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 the most out of typical brainstorming session you need a free and open environment, unencumbered clutter and chaos. A small group of three to seven brainstormers is best. Keeping it small keeps it more focused.

Next you’ll want to brainstorm ideas for potential poll questions. You may be the three to seven people! That’s okay because you can work with you!

Make certain you keep the sessions short and focused. Give detailed instructions to the participants so they know what’s expected of them. Five to ten minutes at a shot will generate a lot of good ideas. Next, Choose an overall category: sports, current news, religion, politics, that sort of thing. You may want to narrow your focus even more: for religion, choose a denomination. For sports, narrow it down to one sport, for current news or politics, choose a current international situation. You get the idea.

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 easier. Don’t take shortcuts with this process. You may uncover several questions that you can use.