Great Idea - Now What?

Let's take a look at a problem that most creative people have: too many good ideas!

You have probably encountered the "feast or famine" of great ideas at some point. In the cold light of day, they all seem to slink away and hide under mental bushes, digging their heads into the sand and doing their best to ignore you.

But you need to grab those ideas by the tail, pull 'em up out of that barren ground and start farming them.

What you need is a method to process ideas.

Getting Things Done guru, David Allen wrote a bestselling book about time management that clarifies how idea management will create a more streamlined and productive task flow.

To begin with, you need a method of capturing ideas. When you don't have a method of capturing ideas, you tend to begin feeling overwhelmed. Your mind is full of all these ideas that you juggle - and as you juggle them you feel stressed because you're not taking action on any of them except to constantly evaluate whether they are good ideas or not.

The idea behind getting things done is to write those ideas down. Get them saved in some kind of app or device - even if it's a note pad and pen beside your bed.

Next, evaluate the ideas. You don't need to do this straight away - and often it makes more sense to leave these ideas a while so that you don't act impulsively only to end up realizing you made a bad decision.

Process your ideas. Decide which ones are immediately beneficial, which ones require immediate action, which ones are "someday" ideas, and which can just get flat out dumped.

In this way, you are moving your ideas along a conveyor belt and will understand how to best prioritize them, rather than having a bunch of random thoughts - often about vastly different aspects of your life - fighting for space in your mind.

How exactly you want to capture your ideas to get them out of your head and create some of that laser focus you want so badly, is up to you.

Most productive people use a combination of different methods because they understand that ideas can strike at any time and it's not always useful to depend on the one method. Sure, you may love your Evernote app, but can you take it into the shower? And if you wake in the middle of the night, will your partner forgive you for opening up your iPhone and waking them with the blings of a thousand notifications?

It's important that you just do something - anything to get ideas from your head onto paper (digital or otherwise) and look back over them after a settling period, to decide on further action.