# Find writing topic in your zettelkasten
One common approach to find a writing topic is brainstorming. Using brainstorming to find an idea, though, may get impractical as you’ll be starting from zero. Secondly, running an effective brainstorming session is difficult:
- Due to Production blocking, you may not develop better ideas (or may come up worse)
- Due to Anchoring effect, we tend to like our first idea the best despite its actual value or effort required
Instead of brainstorming, you should find a writing topic in your zettelkasten instead. Your zettelkasten would contain all of the interesting materials as you’ve been capturing them as part of your workflow already. Not only you’ll find an interesting idea by combining all those interesting zettels (Zettelkasten enables constant focus on interesting materials), you’ll also not be starting from zero as most of the research had been done before.
# References
Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes (p. 25).
Do not brainstorm for a topic. Look into the slip-box instead to see where chains of notes have developed and ideas have been built up to clusters. Don’t cling to an idea if another, more promising one gains momentum.