As a creative person, you know you have many, many, many ideas — usually all before breakfast! But how many of those do you take on and actually just ‘do’?!
Creativity is not the problem. The space and time to create is.
As speakers, authors, coaches, you are creative souls. You want to make a difference. You’re making connections between ideas, you see something that happens in the world and your opinions turn into made up blogs in your heads, FB Lives that might be good for your ideal client avatar, even programmes that could sit inside your business model. But what if you just can’t ‘do’ anything with this idea right now? Or what if you don’t have the resources or it just seems impossible to act on?
Here’s what to do when the ideas come.
One essential is of course to have a little ‘capture’ book and equivalent electronic space where you add all those ‘someday maybe’ ideas*. But what about those ones that really just grab you? The ones that seem like they will be impossible but have a hold on your imagination? The ones that nag at you like little children wanting ice cream. The relentless ones that just keep wanting attention?
Follow the Feeling!
When you have one of those ideas, the ones that won’t let you sleep or focus on anything else for long, our advice is this: Just do it. Set aside half a day. Give into the instance and just have a go and get as much done as possible. Let it have some attention. It’s there, it’s not going away. It’s been knocking on the door of your consciousness for days. Just do it. Even if it seems impossible, start it.
But what would happen if you did?
We’ve all had those moments where actually just doing is what needs to be done gets it done. And out there. And out of your head. Even if it seems impossible, start it. You may find that it becomes easy to complete. Or at the very least you’ll know what needs to be done to get it done. With the BIG or impossible ideas, that’s where your mind will stray to, so you may as well just do something that allows it to rest knowing that you’ve ‘heard’ it.
Who knows what you’ll create!? The key thing here is that magic happens when you creatives folk get hold of something, or let something get a hold of you. What seems to be impossible redefines itself and gets done. And all before breakfast, sometimes!
* David Allen suggested the use of the Someday Maybe file in his brilliant book Getting Things Done. Go check it out, even if just for this little bit of it. The trick when using this system is to review the file often, so you keep whittling the ideas away or acting on them when the time is right.
If you want any support to do this, reach out for a call or join The Connection Hub to get access to over 200 resources to keep you growing your speaker, author, and coach business.
love this article.
It’s funny, sometimes I start my day with the tiny things and get them all out of the way to make room for the bigger stuff, and so often that creates cleaner space to start the inspiration flowing again. And sometimes I like to just focus on one big thing and get it off my list instead.
Thank you for your inspiration xx