Don’t Let Good Ideas Go To Waste

I like ideas.  But when I don’t keep track of them, they tend to wander off, oftentimes never being heard of again.  I’ve found plenty of ways to do this, including mind-mapping software and good ‘ol spreadsheets.  Getting your ideas down on paper (or digital paper) is the first step to preserving them long enough to be of any use to you.  It lets you work out details in your mind and get an idea of feasibility, effort required, etc.  But this is only the first step.

Make Goals

If you just write your ideas down without ever attaching action to them, they will very likely end up getting lost to time.  I know I have notebooks full of ideas from my lifetime, but how many of them ever saw the light of day?  Not a whole lot.  Setting goals for action is the critical step in getting you idea from the dream-world to the real one.  Create small steps you can take to bring the idea to life, set time lines for doing these steps, and then hold yourself accountable to it!

Tell others

When you have a good feeling about an idea – you’ve set goals for it and the preliminary outlook looks good – tell a trusted friend about it.  Tell a family member.  As it comes closer to fruition, start to tell more people.  Like-minded people will encourage and support you.  They will motivate you and give you a greater feeling of accountability – you will want to deliver on what you’ve told them you will do.  And when you’re putting in regular work on your idea, add to that the amount of people you have told about it, and sooner or later you will reach a ‘tipping point’, to use Gladwell’s phrase, and your idea will have so much momentum that it will start taking you along for the ride.

Disclaimer

Sure, some ideas just don’t work.  You will need to be the judge of when to give up.  Also keep this in mind: the more fantastic the idea, the fewer the people who will support you in it.  That is why I recommend choosing your sounding boards wisely.  But hey, if you happen to have an out-of-this-world idea that you’re absolutely convinced will work, do it!  I try to be supportive of any impassioned, endeavoring soul.   I’d rather not have history find me in the position of, say, Newtonian physicists in the early 1900′s who mocked Einstein’s theories, or religious devotees in the 1600′s decrying Galileo’s sun-centered universe.  Nothing is impossible.