Quarantine Your Best Ideas
Many entrepreneurs suffer from the same thing I do: Shiny Shiny Syndrome (a.k.a. S3). You‘ve got S3 when you regularly give in to an overwhelming urge to start working on something new instead of wrapping up your current projects.
Though S3 isn’t (usually) fatal, the cumulative results of pursuing new ideas at the expense of finishing others will have debilitating impacts on your business and your team.
Though Shiny Shiny Syndrome is incurable, I’ve begun to treat my case by learning to quarantine my newest ideas. From Wikipedia:
Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease.
Whenever I have a great idea, I capture it so I don’t lose it, but then I wait at least 90 days before I give it any more of my time. This “compulsory” waiting period keeps me from starting work on a poorly-formed idea I’ll later lose passion for. It also gives me time to think about the idea and socialize it with friends and colleagues. If I’m still enamored with it once the 90 days have passed, it goes straight to the top of my “To Do” list.
By creating a process to postpone and ultimately resurface the ideas I have, I’ve learned to devote more energy working on what matters now, knowing that if my new idea still feels as “shiny” in 90 days as it does today, we’ll both be ready for a long term relationship.
Originally published at www.nonbillablehour.com on January 3, 2012.
