Is it counter productive to accumulate a lot of ideas while meditating? I'm not particularly into Buddhist style meditation but wasn't sure where else to ask. I tend to accumulate a lot of random ideas that filter in and after my session I jot them down - is this counter productive to an effect meditation? I use the Muse brain sensing headband and still stay in a fairly calm state of mind.
There are two types of meditation available in Buddhism. Samatha and Vipassana.

In Samatha, you should concentrate your mind into one target sense. The target sense can be inhale and exhale witch is popular as Anapanasathi. There are more Samatha meditation methods which are targeting difference target senses. Kasina meditation and Asuba meditation are some of them. There you continually get that target sense into mind without allowing any idea, sense or feeling other than that. Then you will feel your mind become more powerful and very high state of calmness. actually Samatha is like sharpening your weapons against a war. 

As Buddhists, our main intention is to attain Nibbana. So after performing Samatha we look at the uncertainty of the body and mind. Here what we are doing is not generating ideas. but perform root cause analysis on uncertainty of body and mind. actually wipassana is like use your weapons against enemy. 

you cannot get good results if you are not following sila, at least five precepts. My friend, Use five precepts not Headbands.