Being Productive

The easiest way to be unproductive is to not have ideas. From what I gather, it seems to happen to everybody. We tend to think of good ideas as rare. When we don't have any ideas, it's because they're so rare. When we get one idea, it's our lucky day. When we get a several great ideas, it's a lie. If we see ideas coming and coming without top, we think it must be a mistake, that certainly some of these must be awful. Well, as soon as we think that we are getting too many good ideas, trust me that they will stop coming.

In my experience, good ideas aren't rare. Your mind will give you enough good ideas to survive. Sometimes you need an idea and you get one. One is good enough. Sometimes, though, your mind hits a dry spell and you just can't think of any new ideas. This is where you need to pull ideas from your reserves.

What's that? You don't have idea reserves? You don't know where idea reserves come from (or possibly what they even are)? Well, that's simple. Your idea reserves are those beginnings of ideas that you have, but haven't worked on. When you are working on one idea and another idea pops into your head, you write it down so you can work on it later. When you finish working on the original idea (or if you just need to take a break from it), you move on to one of these other ideas.

Sometimes we fill up our idea reserves to capacity (if that's possible). It's not that we are trying to come up with them, they just keep coming to us. This is when you think it is a mistake or a fluke. This is when you think that you don't need to write all these down because you'll never need to use all of them. This is when you are wrong.

Like I said before, you tend to get just enough ideas to survive. If you have a massive gushing of ideas, then you better expect a very long dry spell at some point. It happens to me without fail. I save all of my ideas on a Word document. No matter how many ideas I fill it with, I will eventually reach the bottom of the barrel. Fortunately, it's about that time when I get all new ideas, but it's still scary to know that your reserves are dropping.

In short, if you have a good idea, remember that it's a good idea and save it. You never know when they won't be so easy to come by.