How to know which idea to work on
A few days back I got a message from a coach in Creator Club.
I’ll withhold his name, because I’m not sure he want’s it to be shared.
No matter:
“I feel like I’m getting in my own way a bit at the moment. I’ve got a ton of ideas I’m working and writing on, but struggling to get them actioned and followed all the way through. I’m working through it but my to-do lists at the moment seem humanly impossible.”
i.e - A lot of ideas, but not a lot of follow-through.
A common little nugget in small business.
I sat back in my chair, looked around my lair, and formulated my somewhat “thick-skulled” take on this.
In essence, our real problem when we have too many ideas is not that we don’t know which one to focus on.
Or, that we focus on the ‘wrong’ one.
But simply that we don’t follow through on any of them.
We get stuck in overwhelm, and that feels horrendous and can create a downward spiral.
So let’s call that our ‘base case’:
Ideas = Infinity
Follow through = zero
Direction = downward spiral
Or something close to that.
OK, so this means that relative to the base case, ANY follow through is going to be a win, and, the mere ACT of following through is going to train that ‘follow through’ muscle.
I asked him:
“What are the top three ideas you are working on?”
He gave me three ideas.
“OK cool, which of those is the most fun?”
He told me that the podcast would be the most fun - which was one of his three ideas.
I asked him if he had recorded the podcast?
Turns out, it’s all done, except for the intro and cover art.
The action then, is to momentarily forget all the other ideas, and execute the next step of your most fun idea.
But what if it’s the wrong idea?
What if I should do something else?
Well hold on - nothing was getting done beforehand!
Now, we can work on something we like, AND learn to develop the ‘follow through’ muscle.
Our new situation:
Ideas = Infinity minus one
Follow through = one
Direction = upward spiral
That’s 100% improvement on follow through.
Doing this, we also develop speed (I like to call this learning “same day speed” - get the idea, and execute it / ship it on the same day)
Once that thing is done, then move to the next thing.
Look, there are undoubtably a lot more complex ways to go about this. You could sort your ideas into quadrants of importance, and prioritise them based on urgency et cetera. But here I’m assuming that people know they should be doing all that stuff already - but they aren’t doing it.
Which means it’s as good as useless, and it’s much better to execute the thing you want to do.
Spark the productivity via maximum fun or interest.
Then build momentum you need for everything else.
Something to think about.
Want more help with your productivity?
Grab our CEO Hour Framework.
This is a short PDF with three sections to help you plan the week ahead. You can fill it out any time, but we find it’s best when you do it on a Sunday, or Monday, to map out the week ahead.
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