Quickly Getting Ideas Out of Your Head and Into Action
In the process of design thinking, there’s a stage called “ideation”. From the Stanford d.School process to IDEO’s Human Centered Design Methodology, there’s always time set aside to deliberately brainstorm, create frameworks, storyboard, discuss and explore.
Anyone creating, building or trying to solve a problem (big or small) can apply these processes to their lives.
The ideation stage is when you’ve taken the research and inputs you’ve pulled together so far and come up with potential solutions to the problem. The goal is to come up with as many ideas as possible. You try hard to minimize limitations here too. Think big, even impractically, and with an open mind. And when you’ve filled your whiteboards, run out of sticky notes and cluttered your Google Drive, you step away.
You let your ideas marinate.
You step away because that’s where things get juicy. When you come back, the hope is to have more answers than questions. The best ideas will bubble to the top. The sour ones will become more apparent.
But this is where we’ve got to be careful, too.
If you marinate for too long, your energy and enthusiasm can dissipate. We get busy with other more “urgent” things on our plates. Those big ideas that when executed can drastically improve your life get put on the back burner.
It’s important to get the the next stage of that process as soon as possible.
That next phase is action. Prototyping. Piloting. Testing. Whatever you want to call it.
Testing our ideas in the real world with the people we want to get them in front of (or ourselves) is where we validate whether or not they are good in reality.
What works? What doesn’t work? What resonates?
It’s easy to get wrapped up in making our IDEAS perfect and we forget to stay on offense. Mike Vacanti, personal trainer, writer and all-around good dude posted a video the other day that I resonated with. He talks about taking action in the context of overcoming self doubt.
But that philosophy applies to everything. There’s this quote, that goes, “how soon not now, becomes never”.
How soon, you ask? Quicker than you think.
Marinate until you’re salivating, then get that idea on the FIRE!
Onward and Upward
If you enjoyed this post, let me know by tapping that little heart 💚 at the bottom. Much love. ️️✌️️
Brent is Co-Founder of People + Words, a content marketing and copywriting duo with story, data and strategy at the center.
