What you used to do vs what’s needed now

What did you used to do?
Are you still doing it?
Or has it changed?

Do you do something different now?

What might you be doing next?
What does the world need you to do?

How are you adapting and changing what you can do?

Notice when you have an idea

Do you capture them... the ideas and thoughts you have while you’re reading, listening or thinking? 

We overestimate the number of ideas we think we’ll remember. Our train of thought is interrupted with the mundane ... and boom, the thought is gone! 

Worry less about a perfect system for collecting ideas and start with ANY system! 

> Write a few words on a post it 
> Say a few phrases into a voice memo
> Jot a note in a journal. 

We undervalue the creative thoughts that come to us - either by not noticing them at all, or noticing them but judging them as unworthy.

Still after the perfect system? But having it may not mean you firstly notice when you’re having an idea! We can have a shed of tools and not use them. Or a device of apps we rarely tap!

The point is, to become more aware you’ve had an idea or thought that could be captured ... and could be useful in the future. 

Notice ideas and more ideas will come. 

Test, don’t judge ideas

Working on something and wondering how it will be received? 

It’s so easy to swing into judgement mode and decide how it’s going to end up. 

That they won’t buy it. 
That they won’t like it. 
That they don’t need it. 
That they won’t understand it. 

And we haven’t even tested it out yet! 

We can spend a lot of energy thinking and rethinking, assessing and judging. But we may not be the best judges of the things we make ourselves. 

Much better to test our ideas out on people... the people who we are working with or targeting with our ideas. 

Otherwise we may think what we’ve done isn’t good enough.

Until we’ve tested it out, it could be better to hold that judgement. As hard as that is. 

If you or your team have got something you’re still thinking about, wondering how it will go ...put it out there and test it. 

Get some valuable insights and feedback - then you can be more objective about your ideas. 

Test it out sooner

Have an idea for a business, a hunch for a service or planning for a project?
We can find ourselves overthinking, overworrying and overwondering what our probability for success will be. 
Accelerating through the wonder and worry and getting to success is possible though. 

The way to do that is to test out the idea. And sooner than you think. 

Testing something may mean it’s not completely finished, yet. So, how could you test? 

▶️ Talk to your market about your idea and gather their responses. 
▶️ Create a rough version or prototype. 
▶️ Run a trial or pilot. 

Each of these are tests that give us way more insight than continuing to think, worry and wonder. 

Time is saved, our effort is reduced (in pursuing things that may not have the result we hoped for), and we get to validate with the people who matter. 

Yes it could be scary putting yourself and your ideas out there. But you’ll get invaluable feedback and then be able to tweak your offer. Continuing to wonder or to ask people who aren’t in your market is less effective. 

Are you willing to find out sooner, reduce wasted effort and get to a result sooner? 

Test sooner. 

Try again tomorrow

If something is tricky, sticky or difficult to decide or work on, leave it for now and try again tomorrow.

We do wonderful sorting, synthesising, problem solving and integrating when we are asleep. So we can let go of it today and tackle it again tomorrow knowing our abilities can be even better.

For the procrastinators among us, who often leave the sprint to the finish line until the last moment because ‘pressure works for us’ well, we’re missing out on the overnight gold mining that gets done.

If we can get started on a task, project or activity a day sooner than we were planning, we can let a night’s sleep do some of the genius work for us. All that automatic sorting, searching and sensemaking could be more productive, creative and effective than the drag of pushing on through.

Another reason to seek out decent sleep: it makes our ideas, thinking and solutions better.