The real cost of your shiny object syndrome
It's 3am. My brain pings awake with another BRILLIANT idea, and won't let me return to my reveries until I have written it down.
I have notebook upon notebook filled with midnight scrawlings, barely legible markings, and words which, quite frankly, resemble the ramblings of a madwoman.
When the ideas come, they come.
I welcome them.
I create space for them in my day by intentionally switching off (in an effort to halt the midnight light bulbs).
Maybe you can relate to the joy of ideas arriving like a flurry of visitors.
Maybe you have Post-It Notes and Bullet Journals full to the brim with ideas.
But what to do with them all? How can you execute on everything?
All too often, the cost of idea generation without a plan is overwhelm and inaction.
When it feels like "all the things" need doing, knowing where to start becomes a dangerous maze of paralysis.
The result is that your audience never hears the ideas you birthed in those early hour wake-up calls; the posts never get written, the podcasts never recorded, the programmes never built, the services never offered.
So how can you get things moving, action your ideas and get your voice out to the world?
- Decide you will take action: the simple choice of deciding you will stop the wheels from spinning is a commitment to yourself (and your business) that hiding behind hyper creativity isn't helping anyone.
- Build a framework that works for you; making clear choices about what you want to create and when means you can activate a yes/no system of how you spend your time.
- Block out your diary; your diary is a truth teller of how your time is really spent. If you really want to bust some moves, put some skin in the game in terms of time.
- Work in chunks; I use Trello and Pomello app to slice through tasks and stay focused. When you focus in short bursts of time, you can really achieve a great deal.
- Find ways to store your ideas as they come; I photograph my notes in Evernote, and build in time to reflect on the brain dumps and to pick up interesting ideas to build on. Knowing you have a system of reflection helps to stop the overwhelm and information paralysis which leads to inaction.
Without making a choice and DECIDING to action your ideas, you lose them in your notebooks, watching as others build their businesses, hone their voices, and ultimately achieve the recognition you KNOW you are capable of.
That's the true costs of ideas without action- staying on the sidelines while your peers go for the home run.
It starts with a choice.
What's it going to be?