What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed With Ideas
How creatives can move through an overload of ideas and find the ones worth pursuing
What’s it like to be crushed under a pile of half-finished content?
You’ve almost certainly heard of writer’s block (which may or may not be a real thing). But have you ever heard of writer’s overload?
I heard the term for the first time today in an article from Medium contributor Lisa Olsen. In addition to a shoutout, she shared that she has been deluged by ideas for potential articles.
She finds that the volume of ideas she has for content are preventing her from actually creating content. There are so many things she wants to pursue that she often feels overwhelmed, walks away, and ends up creating nothing at all.
Massive volumes of content? Developing multiple things at once? That sounds like my bread and butter.
In the field of data science, we have a corollary to writer’s overload: analysis paralysis. That’s the buzzword for when you’ve done so much number crunching, predictive modelling, plan-making, etc. that you find yourself unable to actually act.
I’m not an expert on writer’s overload. But I can share a few things that I’ve found helpful on Medium— and in creating…
