Ryan's Rules #13: Don't procrastinate with ideas, instead research, plan and assess how you can go about bringing these ideas to fruition. Then go ahead and follow the plan.
Think for a moment. How many pages in your notebook, notes app or personal information management system (think Obsidian, Standard Notes etc) are filled with great ideas? How many of those ideas went beyond being written down? The gap between having an idea and acting on it can sometimes feel enormous. Even staring at the list of ideas can raise a deep anxiety from the depths of discomfort. Better to close the notebook or app or whatever and forget about it. Maybe you promise yourself you'll return to it. A few weeks later, someone else puts that idea, your idea, exactly what you imagined, into action and you get a well deserved gut-punch.
Procrastination is not the problem here. Nor is it taking the first step, even though that can be equally true. It’s just you’re missing a quick and effective method to take something and get it moving.
Ideas are exciting. “What if?” is one of the most compelling questions you can ask. An idea can be anything, lead anywhere. However, when you start prodding and poking them with questions like "Is this viable?" or "How would I even start?", the magic fades and you realise how much work might just be involved. So you get scared of the unknown and that leads to procrastination. The discomfort of finding out, possibly failing, the idea not being as brilliant as you thought… It stops you dead in your tracks.
Avoidance can have an enormous cost. When I was in university there was a competition for startup ideas. This was before any of the lift sharing apps were a reality. The first generation of smart phones were just about available. A couple of friends had an idea for a taxi app, one that would tell taxi drivers where there was a concentration of people that needed a ride. Think concerts, festivals, anywhere a crowd would suddenly need a ride. The idea didn’t win the competition. Nothing happened to further it. If I recall correctly there was feedback that the idea would never work because taxi drivers knew where their fares were… How far of a leap would that idea have needed to take in practice to have become similar to the global ridesharing apps we all know nowadays?
So, sitting on an idea leads to this: the idea you came up with gets created by someone else, better than you could have. Realistically by the time you hear about it, they’ve probably iterated a bunch of times to fix things they never thought would break. It’s not your lack of talent or resources stopping you. It's the absence of a structured next step. When there's no way to cross from inspiration to action, the chasm in between will win every time.
A goal without a plan is just a wish-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Research, Plan, Assess
Taking the first step is important, having a way to get moving is more important. This isn’t a full blown “go to market” plan. All you need is a small but powerful process that helps you to make things happen. Do this with the awareness that perfect never beats good and that this tool can cut both ways. There is an inherent danger that you will get stuck in the beginning of the process rather than pushing through to prototype. So don't get stuck. Set a stopping point for each stage, even an imperfect one, and circle back later if you need to.
Stage 1: Research (Don't Guess, Know)
Before you commit a single hour to building something, spend an hour learning the landscape. This means being able to answer three basic questions:
- Has this been done before? If yes, how, and where did it succeed or fall short?
- Who would benefit from this? Get specific. "Everyone" is not an audience.
- What (or who!) do you not know yet? Identifying the gaps in your knowledge will help you build a roadmap of what to learn or which experts to engage with.
This research will either build upon your enthusiasm and turn it into informed confidence, or stop you from wasting time on something that's going nowhere. Either way, you'll know more in an hour than you do right now. Time box the research phase. If an hour is not enough, be careful not to let it turn into an eternity. The output of your research is the input to your planning.
Stage 2: Plan (Keep It Simple Stupid)
You’re not building an intricate pitch deck in this phase. Or the blueprints to a rocket engine. Your plan only needs to be specific enough that you know what the next three things you are going to do are. It is literally that simple.
This is the classic “eating the elephant” technique. You can’t eat a whole elephant in one go, only one bite at a time. In this stage, if you don’t know where to start, just start on one aspect that your research highlighted. If your research has informed this decision and it’s clear, start there. Break the idea into chunks, and break each chunk into tasks small enough that any one of them could be done in under two hours. Estimate it. Your estimates will be poor to begin with but over time you’ll soon learn exactly what you can achieve in a given amount of time.
Big, vague goals create paralysis. Small, concrete actions create momentum.
A useful question to ask during this phase: If I could only do one thing this week to move this idea forward, what would it be? Write that down. That's your task.
Stage 3: Assess (Be Honest, Not Harsh)
Before you execute, do a quick reality check. Do not poke holes in your idea for sport. Resist the temptation to say “it’s not ready” and go back to either of the first two stages. This is a quick check to make sure you’re not wasting your time.
- Do I have the time, skills, and resources to follow through?
- What's the most likely reason this won't work, and is that reason fixable?
- Am I solving a real problem, or just a problem I find interesting?
Once you are satisfied that the answers hold up, stop at nothing. Do it. Start working. If the answers to your questions raise legitimate concerns, you now have something far more valuable than blind optimism: you have a list of what to fix before you begin.
If the answer to the last question is “interesting” that is perfectly valid by the way. Sometimes problem solving is the actual fun and you aren’t out to build an empire or change the world.
Follow the Plan
I had to state the obvious. Because sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you don’t trust yourself. You’ve just put in the effort to make your idea work. Now do something for yourself to recognize your effort, follow through.
Making your plan felt safe. The idea hadn't been tested, so it couldn't fail, and you didn't find anything wrong. Nothing needed to be fixed. Execution is where reality finally joins your project, and there are a couple of things that can help.
Time-block the tasks. A to-do list is great but it’s just a heap of work. Put specific tasks on your calendar and treat them like meetings you can't cancel. Do the work. If the task isn’t finished by the end of the allotted time, choose whether to keep going or schedule the next block of work. A trick that works for both authors and programmers is to intentionally leave the task incomplete, even if it’s nearly there, because the next time you come back to it you can score a quick win by completing it.
Share your project. Post it publicly or ask someone you know to be an accountability buddy, not for theatrical effect, but as a real commitment.
Be content with being perfectly imperfect. Your plan will need adjusting. More tasks will appear that you didn’t think of. Some things will fail. As long as you maintain progress, that's the plan working as intended. A proper plan doesn’t kill you with rigidity.
Good Ideas Matter Less Than Doing
Most people call this execution. Execution sounds a bit too much like a final punishment to me. Why not just call it Doing? Call it what you want, underneath it all is a basic truth. The quality of your idea matters far less than the quality of your follow-through.
Spending enormous mental energy evaluating whether an idea is "good enough" to pursue is a waste. The universe is not going to give you a sign before you've done a shred of work. Herein lies a hard reality. Most ideas only reveal their true potential (or lack thereof) through contact with the world. You cannot assess your way to certainty. You can only research, plan, and then move.
The ideas that succeed aren't always the most brilliant ones. They're often the ones that belonged to someone stubborn enough to take the next step, and then the one after that.
Get Moving Now!
Ideas have a shelf life. The initial enthusiasm you had for them wanes and they become less attractive to work on. Every day you sit on an idea without a plan, you're burning the energy that makes execution possible.
The formula is not complicated. Don't procrastinate on the idea. Research the ground it would stand on. Build a plan simple enough to actually follow. Assess it honestly. Then move.
The thinking and the doing are not opposites. Research and planning are part of execution. They are the first steps, and taking them removes the paralysis that stops most people before they ever begin.
You don't need a better idea. You need a better relationship with the ones you already have.
What's the idea you're avoiding because you're scared someone smarter will do it better? Drop a comment. Sometimes naming it is the first step.
Ryan's Rules #13: Don't procrastinate with ideas, instead research, plan and assess how you can go about bringing these ideas to fruition. Then go ahead and follow the plan.
![Ryan's Rules #13: Don't procrastinate with ideas, instead research, plan and assess how you can go about bringing these ideas to fruition. Then go ahead and follow the plan.]()
Reviewed by shaner
on
January 12, 2006
Rating: 5