💡 Business Tip - Sleep on It (Issue #77)

Don’t dive into new ideas immediately

This is a tip I’ve had to learn the hard way. My ADHD brain gets excited by new ideas. I would rather explore a new opportunity than do almost anything else. 

Moving fast is good — to a point. But spending time on an idea that you’ll soon abandon isn’t so good. Especially if that time could be invested in other tasks to help your business operate and grow. 

I always encourage you to brainstorm wild ideas when you journal in the morning. Do it before your mind gets bogged down with daily tasks and administrative boredom. I come up with new ideas for my businesses every day. 

However, the not-so-good thing is when I get excited about a new idea and spend the whole day building out a way to test it. 

• Buying a domain name. 

• Designing a quick website. 

• Setting up a newsletter. 

• Creating new accounts for all the relevant socials. 

• Researching the opportunity and creating a business model.

The cool thing is that I’m very fast with this now. I can spin up a new business for testing in less than a day. But, 95% of the time, I abandon the idea later when issues come up, or I decide it isn’t that interesting after all. 

So, my new rule is to sleep on it when I come up with a new business idea. I capture notes about it, and I’ll sketch designs and flows. But now, I stop and let the idea simmer overnight or even for a few days. 

More often than not, the idea isn’t that thrilling in the light of a new day. Or, I change my mind about how I want to explore and test it.

For example, I have a concept that I want to test right now, but I keep changing my mind about how to best structure the experience and business model. So, instead of leaping right into what I hunger to do (e.g., announcing it and testing it), I’m going to noodle on the concept for a few more days or weeks. 

Yes, it drives me crazy to wait! But I’m learning that ideas either get better as you let them simmer in the back of your mind — or time reveals that they aren’t so wonderful after all. 

• Good ideas improve and have a better chance of success. 

• Bad ideas get dropped, and save me time and money. 

You’re going to have all kinds of cool ideas for your business (and new businesses). But I encourage you to sleep on those ideas after you’ve captured them in your handy morning journal.

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I’m Larry Cornett, a Freedom Coach who works with you to optimize your career, business, and life. My mission is to help you become a more "Invincible You" so you can live your life on your terms instead of being controlled by someone else's rules. I live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane.

Photo by Shane on Unsplash