I have an idea list. Or rather it is an idea book. It’s where I before my iPhone and iPad would scribble down ideas for online projects and that cafe I one day want to open.
In my book I would summarise the core of each one in a sentence. Write (very) draft user stories and key points of what would make the idea and its execution great. Not just good.
I kept my idea book in my bag. I brought it out when an idea popped into my head and scribbled it down. The book followed me everywhere and was one of my “yep, check“-items that would go in my bag when I went travelling (for some reason airports and planes, together with cafes, are where I am the most creative but that is a different story). This was during the time when D worked every Saturday and when I would go to the cafe on the other side of the park. Get a cup of coffee, sit outside in the sunshine, or inside if it was gloomy and cold, bring out my purple pen and my idea book and try to refine my ideas. Go through them. Decide which ones I really believed in and burnt for. But it didn’t work and I never did make up my mind and say “yes, that’s the one”.
Then I got my iPhone and I started collecting my ideas in a notes app. It worked better. I would read through and write down further thoughts, particularly on my journeys to and from work. I got excited about my ideas again. So excited that I decided to use a pin code for my folder that contained the notes on my ideas, just in case I lost my phone. It worked really well for a while and my ideas grew and started taking shape, until, during a time when my idea book lay idle, I managed to forgot my pin code, the key to my growing secrets.
Being locked out from my digital idea book didn’t stop my itch to work on my projects. It made it grow stronger and last year it got so strong that I decided I had to do something about it. That’s when I decided I would start freelancing. With the decision more or less made I got a fresh batch of inspiration. I decided to actually start and commit to that blog I’d been wanting to write and my journeys to work resulted in a growing list of draft blog posts. The day we, i.e. Dare, moved into our new office I cried in the ladies toilet because I knew I had to leave. I didn’t want to but if I didn’t do it then I would never do it.
I handed in my notice and it became official. My future was mine. It had of course been mine before, but now it was even more down to me. If I wanted to make that dream a reality, to create that life I envisioned, well, then I better go do it.
Not long after, when I was sat on the tube home, that idea popped into my head. Just as the quote at the start of this post says, it made me want to jump up and start to work on it immediately. Though I didn’t jump (the tube was very full), I did start working on it right then and there and I got so into it that I missed my tube stop. As I was taking the tube back and then walked home I continued writing down all the ideas that sparked from each other. As soon as I got home I told D “This is it. This is what I’m going to do” and that weekend I tested the idea on my brother who’s in the same industry and he loved it.
I’ve tested it on a few other people and friends have unknowlingly mentioned to me “Wouldn’t it be great if…”, but for reasons (excuses) I won’t go into I haven’t actually done anything about that idea, apart from think about it. Everyday. The thing is though, this idea doesn’t belong in my idea book an I haven’t written it down as remider of one of the projects I must do one day. For one I know it inside out and there is no risk I’ll just forget about it. But, more importantly, and I realise that now after having read the below quote, the ideas I’ve been writing down in my idea book so I won’t forget them will most likely never come to anything. They may spark some new idea threads in my mind, but the ideas that really matter and that should be pursued are the ones like the idea I got on the tube. The ones that make you so excited that you want to and actually drop everything you’re doing.
…when you have a really great idea, you get so excited about it you jump up and want to work on it immediately. Your best ideas are ones that you can’t put off until tomorrow. That’s how you know it’s a great idea. The ideas that go on the Idea List are not your best.
From the zenhabit post Toss productivity out
As for the itch to get under the skin of my tube idea, it’s growing stronger and this time I might just have to do something about it. For real and not just inside my idea book.
