If you are a speaker, writer, consultant, entrepreneur, teacher, professor, or any other profession where generating ideas is valued (and is required), you might have asked a question similar to the one asked recently on my blog:
I am in awe of your output. You are constantly generating something! How do you do it? I want to create my own version of the Top 10 but am nervous that it will quickly overwhelm me.
My response includes a thank you, first of all . . . and then my answer.
I always have a place to write down ideas and I keep an idea folder. It’s brimming, but I keep adding. I go through it once a week or at a minimum of two to three times per month. I look through it to see if there is anything that I can put into action or dump. The reason I keep things in a folder is because I can make myself crazy if all those ideas are just floating around and bonking me in the head saying, “Why haven’t you done me yet?”
I use down time (waiting in doctor’s offices, sitting at the airport, watching TV with my husband . . . I’m not really watching but I want to be with him) to generate ideas. When my brain is not engaged in something else, it’s a perfect time for me to see what it can come up with.
I know that most ideas need to be started but not brought to completion all in one fell swoop. The Top 10 Productivity Tips (see more info below) are a perfect example. I first generated a whole slew of categories on 3 × 5 index cards. Then I created an Excel spreadsheet and put down tips for each idea (but not necessarily 10). Then I took the row of ideas and put it into a Word document and would keep fleshing it out. I also had a wonderful assistant at that time who I could send things to. “Sue, help! I have seven ideas on this and need some more.” She LOVED this type of work and was very good at it. So I had to get over the “it must be perfect before I send it to Sue” syndrome.
Divide bigger projects into smaller ones. For the book idea I’m working on, I’m dividing it into little bits and pieces. And just like I’ve written over 250 articles (500–1,000 words each) for Ezine articles in the last two months, I need to break my book into 500-word bits to work on.
One last piece of advice, if you are going to do a Top 10 (which I recommend), get an inventory of content generated BEFORE you advertise it. I did that for Top 10 Productivity Tips and Keeping Chaos at Bay but didn’t for Just Whelmed and have managed to get myself WAY behind (yes, overwhelmed) with it.
Your brain wants to generate ideas for you. Just let it and it will create more possibilities for content than you can ever use. I know this for sure!
Meggin McIntosh, the PhD of Productivity, is an award-winning professor who now works with academics who prefer overjoyed to overwhelmed. She is a former university professor and administrator and currently a coach, author, and workshop leader. People who are overwhelmed and would prefer to be overjoyed instead, are the people I’m fortunate enough to connect with.
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