Over the past decade, I’ve published over 3,000 blog posts.
To put that in perspective, if I were a Major League Baseball player, that would virtually guarantee me a spot in the Hall of Fame. The 3,000-hit club is one of the most exclusive in MLB, counting only 33 players.
One of the most common questions that people ask me about writing a daily blog is where and how I come up with ideas.
Coming up with ideas is one of the big sticking points for bloggers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and anyone who needs creative ideas for dinner, content, and activities.
Even if you’re not creating content daily, your work might require ideas and creativity in other realms.
A regular ritual of ideation keeps your creative energy fresh. The more ideas you force yourself to come up with, the more you can get past obvious possibilities to come up with more creative ideas.
This is true whether your ideas are for content topics, strategies to grow a business, products, dinners, or date nights.
Creativity is a muscle; the more we use it, the more we strengthen it.
The Limits of Idea Lists
I am not lacking for ideas. In fact, my digital and physical notebooks are filled with idea lists — many of which are still not developed.
That said, lists of ideas aren’t always the holy grail that some make them out to be. It’s crucial to understand when the idea list will do more harm than good.
When you’re struggling with brain fog, low cognitive bandwidth or dopamine, or you’re overwhelmed by a time crunch and in need of a quick win, turning to your list of ideas is not the best move.
This may sound counter-intuitive. After all, you might think that in these situations your list of cultivated ideas is your friend. In fact, however, this is when the list is your worst enemy.
3 Reasons Your Idea List is a Trap
Here are 3 reasons why your idea list is a trap when you’re low on bandwidth.
(1) Ideas Without Context Are Meaningless
In the moment when you get an idea spark, the idea is crystal clear to you. Perhaps you write down a few words in your idea list, trusting that those words will trigger your memory of your intention.
The problem is that this idea is a spark, and sparks don’t last long. By the time you return to the idea list you may not remember what you intended. You don’t have enough kindling to reignite the spark and create a fire.
(2) Idea Lists Breed Decision Fatigue
A list of ideas sets you up to make decisions, and decisions drain energy.
When you’re already dealing with brain fog, low dopamine, and low cognitive bandwidth, the last thing you need is to interject more ideas and more decisions into your field.
Here’s the truth: often it’s not the lack of ideas that keeps us stuck. It’s that we have too many ideas spinning around at once, which fragments our energy.
(3) Ideas Don’t Develop Themselves
Even if you can choose an idea from your list without much drama or indecision, you still need to invest effort to develop it.
Your best ideas are like seeing a tempting recipe for a dish you want to eat. This is not the time to start cooking from scratch.
When you are in a low dopamine state and hungry for nourishment, you don’t need a menu or recipe — you need a ready-to-eat meal.
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