Thoughts of Substance and Strategizing Action

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I titled my article Thoughts of Substance while I leaned on Zapier.com to expand on such thoughts. They provided good content that discussed moving beyond the generation of ideas into a more decisive process.  

According to Zapier, "finally we come to the hardest part of the process. Recognizing which ideas are worth pursuing, and which should be dumped or put on hold. I'm not sure there's a solid answer to how you can go about this, but I picked up some clues to perfecting the process.

Lewandowski suggests using passion as a filter, which I'm definitely on board with. If you're looking at a huge stack of ideas (hopefully by this stage you are), you have to be ruthless about which ones you choose to pursue—we'll never find time to execute on every idea we have. And anyway, you'll probably find (at least I often do) that after giving them time to settle, you'll be much less excited about some of the ideas you've noted down. For Lewandowski, this worked as a kind of process of elimination.

‘Many of the ideas at the fat end of the funnel didn’t get much further because that passion wasn’t there — either for me or for others in the room,’ he wrote.

But I also love that Lewandowski pointed out using passion as a filter for your ideas doesn't necessarily mean you can only work on life-changing ideas. You just have to care about them enough to bring them to life.

‘Not everything that goes into the wide end of your idea funnel should be utterly change-the-world-I-have-to-make-this-happen-at-all-costs, yet at some point in that funnel from idea to product, someone will have to be personally convicted of the idea and want to fight for it.’

You must say "no" to some ideas you want to execute. It's pretty much inevitable. It's important to get used to looking at your ideas objectively and choosing the ones that have the best chance for success or support your goals, and letting go of others (or at least putting them aside for a while)…”

Speaking as a creative person, I believe my thoughts of substance are generated through a process that honors the manifestation of such thoughts. It isn’t about putting pressure to generate ideas but more about creating a space that respects the process.    

Tell me about your process of thinking, when, where and how it works for you.