I have ideas. Lots of them. I don’t want to say “too many” ideas even though it sometimes feels like it.
I blame having an abundance of ideas on James Altucher. He wrote a blog post about building his idea muscle that motivated me to start writing down 10 ideas a day. It took more than a year after reading that blog post for the idea habit to stick, but for the last 4 months or so, I’ve been able to write down 10 ideas a day. They’re mostly mediocre ideas, but a few good ones slip in occasionally. The belief is that quantity trumps quality.
While it’s great to come up with ideas, eventually just coming up with ideas feels like a burden, especially when you think some of them are good. If you don’t start testing some of the ideas in the real world, it weighs on you mentally. You start to feel no better than a joker who just dreams all day in the clouds.
What do I do with the ideas?
Most of the time – nothing. They sit. They marinate. Sometimes I’ll think of a twist on an old mediocre idea and it turns out to be something pretty good. But the vast majority of the time, I won’t do anything with an idea I come up with. Then occasionally I get an idea that I have to do something with.
Breakdown of my ideas:
- Awful.
- Bad but could be good if worked on or combined with another idea.
- Unsure of idea.
- Has potential. Could do well with the right execution.
- Must do something with this idea.
An example of an idea with potential:
It’s whiter than a Norwegian parade outside. #snowmageddon
— Ben Nesvig (@BenNesvig) December 11, 2010
That tweet is more so a thought, but it validated the idea I had for my book, which it was included in. With the validation, I altered the execution to include it in a better format.
An example of an idea I had to something with:
I recently went to a cupcake place that I love. That night I decided to brainstorm 10 ideas for them and noticed they had a Unicorn Poop cupcake for April Fools Day. One of my ideas that day was to create a short/weird video for the cupcake to promote it. That night I emailed the owner and got a response the next day that she was interested.
The video took me less than an evening to film and edit. Shipping this out the door reduced the burden of ideas and worked as an experiment in video creation/promotion.
So far the video has been effective in promoting the Unicorn Poop cupcake. My Mom is quite proud.
The point of all of this is that it isn’t that hard to test ideas. You can test an entire book with a blog post and see the reaction. You can test ideas with a tweet, a video, a conversation, or a simple website. There are a thousand ways to test something before fully committing ( a positive test doesn’t mean the final product will be loved, but it’s at least a positive indicator). The catch is sometimes people won’t love something until they’re holding the final product in their hand. Some people might not be excited by the idea, but love the product.
If you have too many ideas that “might work” or things you want to do, there’s only one thing you need to do: pick. If it doesn’t work, then alter the product/idea or move on to the next one. If you don’t find an outlet and test some of your ideas, it’s going to weigh you down mentally.
Jason Hull says
Thanks for sharing your experiences with the 10 ideas a day effort. It’s enlightening to see (validate?) how it’s working for someone else as well. I’m finding, like you, most of mine aren’t worth a darn, but that percentage is slowly (glacially) shrinking, and it’s also easier to write longform content now than it was six months ago.