By: Eden Hensley; Photo by: Brooke Dennis for Alt Summit
As creatives we are often challenged with too many ideas. Once we start creating, the ideas just keep coming and coming, threatening to overwhelm us and to stall all momentum. At best, we work on multiple projects slowly inching forward. At worst, we suffer from idea paralysis.
During her keynote, Laurie Smithwick talked about an idea parking lot. The concept is simple, whenever she comes up with a new project idea she adds it to her parking lot on Evernote. Later when she has time and is ready to work on something new, she reviews the ideas she parked. What you use to capture your ideas is not important. What is important is that you are cataloguing them for later. Other ideas for parking lots that Laurie mentioned were a notebook with handwritten lists, the Notepad app, and a separate email account to which you mail new ideas.
How do you keep track of your ideas? Are you able to park them for later?
Join the Alt community tomorrow October 1, 2014 at 9AM PT/12PM ET on Twitter as we discuss idea paralysis. To participate:
- Follow @AltSummit on Twitter to see the questions.
-
Open your favorite Twitter client, such as Hootsuite (or Twitter in two browser windows), or a Twitter Chat application, such as TweetChat. The first stream or window will be a search stream for #AltChat (be sure to select All and not Top). The second stream or window will be your Twitter notifications (the little bell if you’re opening Twitter)–these are direct responses to what you are tweeting.
-
Right before the chat starts, tweet to let your followers know what you are doing and that your feed may be more active than normal. For example, Friendly PSA: My feed will be active for the next hour as I participate in #AltChat We are talking about idea paralysis today.
-
Retweet our question before posting your answer to give your followers context.
-
Include A1, A2, and so on at the beginning of your 140 character answer.
-
Include the #AltChat hashtag in your answers and replies to other participants so that we can see your tweets. And, if you have available characters, rather than mention us, include the #AltSummit hashtag and your tweet will post to our home page.
Have an idea for a future Alt Chat? Let us know!
