Originally a short pamphlet for advertising executives, A Technique for Producing Ideas has become a cult classic in creative circles. At just 48 pages, it’s arguably the most efficient, practical guide to creativity ever written.

In this post, you’ll learn Young’s 5-step formula for producing ideas on demand — and find a legitimate way to access the PDF. Young was a top advertising executive at the J. Walter Thompson agency, a former chair of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and later a professor at the University of Chicago. He wrote this technique based on observing how creative geniuses (scientists, artists, copywriters) actually worked.