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It can get overwhelming trying to handle so many ideas that come forward for a new business or even a well-established company. As small business owners, we find that keeping good ideas and discarding those that are not pressing can be difficult. Sorting and keeping ideas organized is the key to not feeling overwhelmed and losing ideas you may want to do later. Today, I will talk about ways you can manage your thoughts and ideas that you may want to do now and in the future. Let’s eliminate the too many ideas syndrome right now.
Topics
What is Too Many Ideas Syndrome?
Too many ideas syndrome (TMIS) is self-explanatory. It is when someone has too many ideas and can not focus on or complete them. People with this will feel like they need to do everything at once.
If TMIS sounds like you, you can try these ways to organize your thoughts and make them more attainable in your business.
Establish an ongoing digital or physical list of to-dos.
First, let’s talk about creating an ongoing to-do list. These lists work well if they are explicitly designed for a type of category. You can make an ongoing to-do list for your blog, for your invoicing process, bill paying process, for client procedures, etc.… Throwing all these to-dos into one massive list without any direction or tagging will create a list of unused ideas.
To create an ongoing list, you must find a place to physically store or digitally store your thoughts; remember you may have a lot of thoughts you are collecting in a variety of different platforms, devices, cloud storage, etc., so whichever method you want to use, make sure it has enough space for all of it and then some.
The best way to organize ideas digitally
I prefer digital in an application like OneNote or Evernote, where I can establish folders and notebooks for specific tasks. For example, if you want to make an effort to blog once a week for your business and want to collect ideas using an application like these will allow you to store saved pages to research later and determine what works for your future post; these applications also allow you to copy certain sections and paste them into your page and it automatically includes the source of the quoted area. Doing it this way makes it much easier for us as entrepreneurs to get the information we need and determine how we want to write a blog post.
The best way to organize ideas physically
If you decide to do things physically, you will need a place to store the paperwork, or it will get unruly very quickly. A binder (Affiliate Link) and tabs (Affiliate Link) with paper sleeves to hold different things work nicely on specific topics. You can also use an accordion folder (Affiliate Link) with at least 14 tabs (Affiliate Link). People have also used index cards for this method with a binder (Affiliate Link) ring to hold the topic of tasks together.
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Prioritize Tasks
After you decide where to store these ideas, it’s time to get them together and place them in that location. Be sure to prioritize all the ideas from most important to least important. You can use a ranking method like 1, 2, 3, 4, A, B, or C, with A or 1 being the most critical priority. Each priority order you decide to use will help you when you’re reviewing your ideas.
- Ask yourself these questions to help you determine the priorities of each task.
- What will happen if I don’t do this task?
- How important is this task to my overall goals?
- Are other people looking for this information after I finish this task?
- Does this task help me with the essential objectives of my business?
- Does this task have a strict deadline?
- How much time will it take for me to finish this task?
- Could someone else do this task instead of me?
Here is a list of 45+ prioritization questions I found online. You can visit them for more questions to support you when making a prioritized list of tasks.
These questions will help you combat too many ideas syndrome and determine what ranking you want to put on these tasks you bring together.
Other things you need to know when compiling this list of ideas
While spending at least a few hours gathering these ideas into one place is excellent, you must also determine the subcategories you may want to use to narrow the topic. It doesn’t need to be super specific; it just needs to be a category that helps you know what other topics may go under that category.
For example, if you are a blogger and know each month you write about a particularly popular topic that happens that month, you may want to start with a list of topics to write about for each month of the year. Then, break it down into the ideas for those particular topics. So, if you write about kids’ bedroom organization, you may want to share those topics for July for the back-to-school season.
Creating some direction with these topics will make it easier to find later. Retrieval of ideas is complex if you do not have a well-organized system in place. I hope these too many ideas syndrome (TMIS) solutions help you and your business be more direct in your actions and determine what you need to do next.
Now, it is your turn; please comment on how you organize your ideas and thoughts for your business. I would love to hear from you.
Need help with organizing your ideas? Check out my Virtual Consulting Service to help you manage your ideas for your business.
Great questions, and a super way to embrace a reality check for all of your incoming ideas.
Ugh, I get so many ideas, and often they aren’t even ideas that I want to iterate. (When I see something that triggers an idea for a great blog that — reality check — I know I don’t need or want to write, I email it to a colleague who does blog about those things. Y’know how you’re supposed to “BE the change you wish to see in the world?” I SEND the blogs I wish to see in the world…to someone who will write them. 😉
My blog content ideas go into WordPress drafts; everything else (life tasks, work projects, whatever) goes on a master list. If nobody is asking for the thing, it doesn’t go onto my task list; it just stays in that holding pen until I am inspired to turn something (anything!) into reality. But motivation is a different topic. For just capturing these things, I tend to go analog until I hit my annual or quarterly planning stage, at which point I schedule blocks of time to turn the ideas into reality. If I blow off those blocks of time and don’t work on the “assigned” project then I know, at least, that I was wrong about it being important enough to me. Because if I only think about it and don’t take action, then it really isn’t a priority (just like keeping an item but never wearing or using it means it’s not really something I value, just something I *think* I value).
It is super important for all of us have some process to manage all these ideas. Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Julie.
I love your graphic for prioritizing tasks. I used to have sooo many project ideas. That has slowed down. I think because I had a lot to learn when I started my business, but also I’m more discerning now. I ask myself if a project is worth my time.
The big takeaway is having a place to capture and organize your ideas. Once you do that, you can prioritize what you want to focus on and when. Or, store and retrieve the ideas as needed. It’s about having confidence in that system.
I use several systems depending on what I’m doing. For example, for blogging, I have a binder with categories. When an idea pops in, I file it there. If I’m stuck for something to write about, I’ll refer to the specific category, see what I collected, and decide if something is worth elaborating and writing about.
With random ideas that I might want to do ‘someday,’ I file them in an “Ideas” folder. I revisit that occasionally to see if I want to bring those to light.
When I get a new idea for my business, I add it to my task list with the lowest priority and no due date. That way it doesn’t distract me from my current commitments, and IF I find myself able to take on something new, I can review the list and pick something. Occasionally I go through the list and delete items (“What was I thinking?” LOL).
I get that! I find that sometimes we get a little out of hand with the tasks. It’s important to go back and revisit after the list was created. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.