10 Tips to turn your ideas into reality (and why you should do so)
If you are like me, you have ideas all the time.
A few of them are like “I will make ten thousand bucks in less than six months”. Or simpler like “I will start a blog or a YouTube channel”.
But life gets in the way and you forget about them.
Today, I’m sharing 10 tips to get your ideas out of the paper (and or head).
Let’s go to the tips…
Tip #1 — Know how to choose the best idea
I am going to start with the hard one this time.
As humans, we have some mental programmation to have ideas. Lots of them. But, how to pick a good idea? I learned that by testing and reading a lot.
A great idea will stick with you. It will be with you when you sleep, eat, talk with people, and even when you are in the bathroom. It will keep in your mind until you go to the world, expressing it in some way.
That, my friend, it’s the idea you should pick.
Tip #2 — Define a purpose for your idea
Some ideas might be difficult to execute. To keep track until it gives you some results, you need to define a purpose.
It’s your main reason to start doing it in the first place. Remember to always remember why you are doing it and why your idea is so important.
Your answer will help you to find motivation in dark times.
Tip #3 — Imagine different scenarios
I learned about it when I was studying digital marketing and KPIs.
It’s important to have a whole vision of the results of your ideas. To create some boundaries and avoid resistance, you can imagine different scenarios. To create them, consider your budget, time of execution, energy, and people involved.
- Ideal ⇒ what results do you want to achieve with your ideas. Here, any problem happens. Here we have 100% of success
- Wonderful ⇒ this scenario is better than the ideal. If the results pass your expectation, how should they be? Here we got more than 100% of success.
- Worst ⇒ this is when everything goes totally wrong, what you would have in the end? Here we have something less than 100% but is not a 0% of failure as well.
- Collapse ⇒ here things are worse than worse. Create a scenario where you have 100% of failure
This will help you to see what is in your control or not and don’t freak out when things get out of control (they will. Trust me).
Tip #4 — Do enough planning, then just do it.
Sometimes we tend to plan too much and execute less.
To avoid this trap, you can create some goals, like planning a week, then executing. At the end of the week, you can do another round of planning.
Do enough for X amount of time. Then, focus on doing what you planned. If you see yourself giving excuses like “I should plan more this”, write in your to-do list “Plan project X next week”. This way, you keep an equilibrium between planning and execution.
Tip #5 — Do enough research!
Let’s say you want to create an AI, but you have no skills in programming. What should you do?
Study for 3–4 years, as most people do, or study for 1 month, make a plan, and execute?
I know studying is important, but sometimes it doesn’t help as much as we thought.
Here is a question to ask yourself to know when the research is enough:
- Based on your purpose with your idea, the information you have right now is enough to do a first step?
If the answer is yes, so you already did all the research you needed, at least to go for the first step. The rest you can find on the way.
Tip #6 — Find partners
Here’s something you can do when you don’t have enough knowledge to apply your idea: contact people who does.
With a good purpose and planning, you would be capable to pitch your idea. This way, you can make them buy your idea and partner with you.
It’s important that your partner should be someone who knows about something you don’t. So both can complement each other.
Tip #7 — Do an MVP
I have been writing about baby steps. After all those tips, if you apply at least three of them, you would be capable to create an MVP.
MVP, if you don’t know, it’s the abbreviation for “minimum viable product”. Every creation you know right now didn’t start like that. Netflix was a DVD shop. Facebook was a social media available only for students.
To create an MVP, you need to figure out the cheaper and quicker way to put your idea into the world.
Instead of trying to build a car, you can start with a skate, for example. Both have the same goal: move people from point A to point B.
Tip #8 — Optimize your idea
After your first test, you will get a lot of improvements and errors to solve. This is great because you can optimize until your idea gets good enough for you.
A good way to optimize is before your test, you can write your expectations of what did good and wrong. After your test, you can see whether it went well or not. Then, create 2 or 3 actions to correct the mistakes you found in your project.
Tip #9 — Ask for feedback
This could be in optimization as well, but people’s feedback should come from day 0. It’s important for you to know what people think, so you can make improvements. It’s also important to create some arguments to cut their objections.
Yet, always think about this phrase: trust in your gut. Some ideas may seem crazy to people, they would try to put you down or say it is not gonna work. Yet, if you think the same, don’t listen to them. Listen to yourself first and select the best comments to improve your pitch or project.
Tip #10 — Always focus on execution
I talked a lot about purposes, planning, MVP, and improvement.
But to all this exist — even your idea exists — you need to execute it from day -1.
You will know if you are going to the right place because you will be walking through it. All those steps back then are a pause, a pit stop that is necessary, but it’s not important if you don’t execute.
A good way to do it is to make your actions simple, concrete, and easy to be done. Always focus on action.
Tip #11 — Become an idea scientist
In my experience, at least 90% of your ideas will be wrong, or inefficient, or unrealizable.
It’s hard to not quit when everything you do goes wrong.
A way to deal with this is to imagine yourself as a scientist. If you see one closer, you will understand they are always trying new things, making tests, and failing a lot. But they don’t quit. They create a new hypothesis and try it again.
As Thomas Edison once said:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Your failure doesn’t define who you are but what you do with it.
A person who fails but never gives up can be known as someone persistent, but also a genius or a scientist.
Chose the name most fits you. Then, every time you fail, you will know it’s just a way of not doing things.
I liked a lot to write this article. I wrote all by myself, thinking of what I do when I want to innovate and create something new.
I hope this article can help you to achieve your dreams and take out of the paper your awesome idea.
See you soon, take care, and thanks for your reading.
