Keep an Idea Diary
I believe that we all have good ideas. Unfortunately, many of us do not take our ideas seriously. Our ideas come to us as fleeting thoughts. Sometimes, we might reflect on them. Many times, we merely push them out of our minds. Lots of us give short shrift to the ideas we come up with. Often, we do not feel worthy enough to believe our ideas have the same merit as those of certain people we look up to. That is a mistake.
For the most part, the true difference between our ideas – the ideas we push aside and forget –and the ideas of people who convert them into something tangible, is that we do not act on our ideas. We do not work to convert our ideas into something solid.
How do we overcome this? To overcome one habit, it is often useful to develop another habit.
There is no way we are going to follow through on any of our ideas unless we remember them. Consider how many times you had a good idea and forgot it, only to be reminded of it when you saw that someone else had the same idea but acted on it. They may have ended up with a thriving business. Those of us who had the same idea and did nothing ended up with nothing.
We should all cultivate the habit of keeping an idea diary. On a daily basis, or when an idea comes to us, we should enter it into a journal or document on our computers or smartphones. We should also review our idea diary at specific intervals; once a week might work. In this way, we can be reminded of our good thinking and be confronted by it on a weekly basis.
If we review all the good ideas we keep coming up with, every single week, I believe we have a much better chance of acting on our ideas. Keeping an idea journal might just be the kind of good habit we could all use to break us out of our status quo keeping complacency.
We all have good ideas. Perhaps by keeping an idea journal, we can all start making some of our good ideas into good realities.
Image courtesy of [Teeratas] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
*Authors note: You might see this column pop up online in a newspaper, under the name Both Sides. I am publishing this column here first at CYInterview.com. For a bunch of years, I have been writing newspaper columns. Since my columns have received a good response on CYInterview, I thought I would share it with you. Hope you enjoy.
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