Grow With Soul: Ep. 65 Choosing Which Projects and Ideas to Pursue With Kayte Ferris
One of our challenges as creative people running or starting businesses is idea wrangling. For sure there are periods where we think we’ll never have a good idea ever again, but there are also times where it feels someone’s plugged a cosmic USB stick into us and we’re just downloading and processing all these different ideas. Sometimes they are really specific this product or that product kind of ideas, sometimes it’s a billion blog posts ideas over a weekend, sometimes they are more general, around your approach or offering that feels like a levelling up. Having these ideas is great, it makes you feel alive and like you’re really existing within and in tune with your business and your purpose. But it does also leave you confused, overworked, uncertain, ready to rip everything up and lacking in clarity. In today's episode, I dig into all of this.
Here's what we talk about in this episode
Keep accessible records of your ideas
Define the shape of the idea
Tune into how you feel about that idea
Assessing each of your ideas with two questions
Choosing between ideas that are quick wins or slow burners
Different types of idea overwhelm
What format your idea should be in
Having an idea at the worst time
Are the new ideas time-sensitive?
None specific ideas
What's my one thing
Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 65 of Grow With Soul - today is a solo show, and I’m digging into how to decide which projects or ideas to pursue. One of our challenges as creative people running or starting businesses is idea wrangling. For sure, there are periods where we think we’ll never have a good idea ever again, but there are also times where it feels like someone’s plugged a cosmic USB stick into us and we’re just downloading and processing all these different ideas. Sometimes, they are really specific this product or that product kind of ideas; sometimes it’s a billion blog posts ideas over a weekend; sometimes they are more general, around your approach or offering that feels like a levelling up. Having these ideas is great, it makes you feel alive and like you’re really existing within and in tune with your business and your purpose. But it does also leave you confused, overworked, uncertain, ready to rip everything up and lacking in clarity. So, let’s talk about that.
First things first, keep records of your ideas.
More than that, keep accessible records. By which I mean, not just jotting it down in a phone note you’ll never find again, or on a scrap piece of paper you’ll accidentally throw away, or a notebook you use for something else. Professionalise your record-keeping - personally, I have different phone notes for ‘content ideas’ and ‘product ideas’, so that I can search for them and access them whether I’m at my computer or on the go. You may choose to have a specific page in your planner, a specific notebook, a Google doc or a tab in your project management app. The important thing is that you can know where an idea is if you look for it in a months time.
Because keeping records isn’t just about writing it down so you don’t forget. It’s an idea quarantine where the thought can live until you revisit and assess it in the cold light of day. It’s a promise to yourself that you’re taking these ideas seriously. It’s a repository for times when you’re drawing a blank on blog post ideas. My idea records are a massive part of my business; it couldn’t function without it. A lot of ideas will, when you come back to them, not be up to scratch; I’m sure we’ve looked back on excitedly scribbled ideas and wondered what on earth we were thinking. Some ideas need to wait for their time to come. Most ideas I have stay in the quarantine for at least a week, sometimes months and years - it’s not always the right time, but when the right time comes I have the record to pull up.
So, first things first, get into the practice of recording your ideas, make that the first impulse rather than forcing yourself to act or not act upon it right there and then.
First we need to define the shape of the idea. If we allow ourselves, even the smallest ideas can be built up into great complex cathedrals as our brain runs wild. An Instagram caption can be turned into a book, a pattern idea into a whole fashion line. Before we can decide whether this is something we want to pursue, we need to make sure we’re basing that decision on a clear, real thing. Some times the way to do this is to sketch out the idea - for example, if I have an idea for a course or an eBook, I jot down what the modules or contents page might be. If I get stuck after 2 or 3 bullet points then this is clearly more of a blog post than a course. Tune in to how you feel about something too - yes, you probably could create a whole fashion line, but if it’s making the idea you had for that one piece not feel exciting anymore, then perhaps that’s not the right idea.
When assessing which ideas to pursue, I tend to use two questions.
The first is 'is it a quick win, or is it a slow burn?' Can this be a caption posted on Instagram tonight, or is it a long term project that may take 6 months? Some of the quick wins are obvious, they’re the things that are clearly content ideas, or a website change you can make in an hour, and the key with these is to get them out of the front of your mind so you can sort through the rest of the jumble. I would suggest that anything you could do in an hour tomorrow counts as one of these quick wins - plot your content ideas into your calendar, mark in your planner where you’re going to do that website update and then let them melt away from your brain.
This then brings us to the other types of ideas. Perhaps you’re choosing between two course ideas - one you could get up and running in a month, another that’s going to take three; the quick win or the slow burn. Maybe you’ve got a couple of quick win ideas, or are frustrated that every idea you have is going to take months of development. In these cases, think about what you and your business needs in the short, medium or long term. Perhaps you do need to boost your income in the next month, so pick the idea that you can get up and out quickest. Maybe you’re actually stacked with client work or have projects you’re still finishing, in which case the slow burn is going to be perfectly timed to be finished just at the time you need it. We can sometimes deal with ideas in isolation, judging them on their merits rather than thinking about how they slot into what we need - an idea that doesn’t help you achieve your goals or help you get to where you want to go isn’t a good idea.
This has been what I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. I had three or four ideas I was torn between pursuing after The Playbook finished this week. One was a slow burn course project, one was a programme sort of between a quick win and a slow burn, another was a really slow burn creative project, and another was a quick win course/membership hybrid that I could put together fairly quickly (although within that option, I was also swaying between a version that was truly quick win, and one with slow burn elements). I felt strongly about all of them, I felt excited to do the work for all of them, I believed in the impact of all of them. I flip flopped for a while about which one to really go for, feeling very much like I didn’t have a handle on where I was really going with everything.
I had to think about and ground myself in the realities of each of these ideas, what it was going to be like in the reality of my life to do each one. The in-betweeny programme actually felt like, although it could be a quick win, the timing wasn’t really right, and it would be a better offering for being a slow burn. That was off the table. The slow burn course, I realised, after spending the last five months working on and creating The Playbook, I wanted something different for this next season. The really slow burn project was something I decided to chip away at, but I also realised that with discounting the other two ideas and the fact that I’m slowing down my 121 work, I was facing a a couple of months with no projected income - and I should probably fix that! That helped me to decide on the quick win hybrid programme, because the whole point of it is that I create the content based on the needs of the participants - so there wasn’t a lot of up front work that needed to be done. I decided on the idea that gave me what my business needs at this point in time.
Which brings us onto the second question, and probably the most important: does it align with and build towards your business vision?
Sometimes we have ideas that are good, but not good for us. It’s like when you see a physical product that you fall instantly in love with. Maybe it’s a dress that you’d never wear, a piece of furniture the size of your living room, a painting that goes with precisely nothing in your house - there’s just something about it that you love so intensely even though it doesn’t fit into your life. In those moments you have to say ‘I love you, but it would never work out’, and let that be enough. It’s the same with ideas. Some ideas are completely impractical for you and your business to bring into fruition, you may love the idea, but it just won’t work out, so let that be enough.
For example, every time I see a picture of a swanky co-working space in London or another city, I think ‘I could set one of those up here’. It would have all vintage furniture, coffee and almond croissants, a podcasting booth, regular yoga sessions, a book club. Which is all very on-brand for me, and could be a viable idea; it’s certainly not ludicrous. But it’s not aligned with my business vision. Running a physical space is more of less the opposite of the kind of life I want to live. I don’t want to be tethered to opening hours and appointments, I don’t want the pressure of overheads. My vision for my business is to give the inspiration and knowledge they need to go off and empower themselves to create their own business; it’s not have people set up a home here.
It takes a lot of honesty to tell yourself ‘this is good, but it’s not right for me’, I guess in a lot of ways it also takes an abundant mindset to let go of an idea that could make money because it’s not the right one for you, and self-trust to believe that another one will come to fill its place. The thing to remember here is that you’re not doing this business to make money at any cost; you’re doing it because you want a certain kind of life, and to have a certain kind of impact on the world. If you pursue ideas that don’t lead you toward that life and impact you’re never going to have it, so delete the record of those ideas with happiness and faith.
So now, let’s look at some different types of idea overwhelm and how to deal with them more specifically in a kind of quick fire round.
Lots of content ideas
This is one of the best ‘too many ideas’ problems to have because you’re always going to need content and I guarantee you’re going to have long periods where you think you’ll never come up with another blog post or podcast or photo idea ever again! With these types of ideas, look at the ones that are time-specific and which ones are evergreen. For example, in January I had a ton of new content ideas that I couldn’t post all that month. Some were pretty time-specific, like the blog post ‘Maintaining the new year energy’ and my goals and reviews posts and podcast, so they had to be prioritised. Others generally sat better at the start of the year, so some of the planning posts, although evergreen, are more timely in January, so they were the next priority. Other ideas I had, like my ‘How I Got Into And Use Tarot’ blog post wasn’t time specific, so I saved that for when I didn’t have another idea to post. In this case, keep records of your ideas and plan a couple of months worth of content in advance so you can see how everything slots together and where it best fits.
What format should this idea be in?
You’ve got a great idea but you’re not sure how it can best be delivered to the world - should it be a course, a book, a 121 programme; if it’s a product idea perhaps there are different material options or size or colours you’re toying with. Again with this, go back to those questions I discussed - is each iteration a quick win or a slow burn, and what does your business need? Perhaps to scale up the size would take you six weeks of development, or a particular fabric has a long lead time, but you want to release something before Mother’s Day to tide over your Spring income - so you choose the quick win version. Perhaps the 121 element doesn’t feel aligned with your business vision so you choose to make your idea a self-led programme.
An idea at the worst time
You’re snowed over with client work or orders, perhaps a piece of machinery is out of action or you’re in the middle of moving house and then bam - you get the world’s greatest idea. You don’t feel like you’ve got the bandwidth to work on it, but you want nothing more than to work on it. In this situation, let’s take stock. First of all, is it time-sensitive, like a wonderful Christmas campaign coming to you in early November? If yes, how much of a quick win is it, is it even possible to get it done in time, work load aside - if it’s not, record it for next year. How important is it to your business goals, is it going to truly be the thing that makes the difference to you hitting a goal? If it is, I would look at some of the things already on your plate and move off the non-urgent ones to fit this one in.
If the idea isn’t time-sensitive, take your foot off the pedal with it. I know you really want to start working on it, but the work you do on it now when you’re distracted and stressed isn’t going to be the best work. Sometimes I use the promise of a new idea as motivation to get through and finish my existing projects, or I use my down time, like in the bath, to daydream and develop it.
If you’re worried that someone else is going to have the idea and release it before you’re able to, don’t. The chances of someone else having this exact idea born from your unique brain and experiences are pretty slim. If someone else could release this exact idea, then I would perhaps question how good the idea really is. How can you develop it to make it more unique and exciting?
A non-specific idea
These are the true antagonists of the idea world - not so much an idea, more a feeling or a longing that you can’t put into words, an itch you can’t reach to scratch. It might be a feeling that something’s not quite right, a feeling of disjointedness, longing for a change, wanting or needing to do something new but no clue on exactly what. I find that this can be when the panic sets in, and panic is not a friend to idea generation. The good news is that there isn’t a huge amount of time-sensitivity here, so you can afford to explore these feelings and draw the idea out, rather than need to pick something right now. My advice is to connect to your business vision, to what you want your business to do for your life, and think about where there are disjoints between that and what you’re currently doing. Perhaps there’s not enough time for creativity in your day to day, perhaps you actually want to spend less time dealing with customer queries, perhaps your current offering isn’t allowing you to express your purpose to the best of your abilities.
What’s my one thing?
I think there are pros and cons to the ‘one thing’ methodology. On the one hand, it’s a good practice to narrow down on the very best version of what you can provide the world. On the other, it disregards the multi-passionate, multifarious complicated jumble that is the human existence. Of course you are interested in more than one thing, so first of all, don’t allow yourself to see that as a fundamental flaw or an inexcusable lack of focus when it is just your fundamental humanity.
So let’s reframe this question to ‘how can I narrow down my ideas to a single focus?’. It might be that your magic, your uniqueness is in the combination of two things you love or are great at - why make yourself choose just weaving as your one thing when it is weaving with your hand dyed materials that creates products that are uniquely yours?
Remember, it’s never a case of ‘now or never’ with your ideas. As long as you’re recording them you can always come back to one in a few months, even next year. As I always tell myself, not everything has to be done right now; we need to leave ourselves space to grow into, to develop our business into, and be able to enjoy the process.
As I mentioned earlier, I have been working on a new hybrid programme which is now available for you to check out and sign up to. Immersion is an invitation to you to dive deep below the surface of your business and re-emerge feeling confident and full of direction. It has the best parts of a course and coaching - there is the focus, accountability and community of a course, with the specificity and flexibility of a coaching programme. The theme for this Immersion is Choosing A Road, so if you felt that any of my quick fire examples were just like you, or you are generally feeling a little stuck at a crossroads in a big or small way in your business, this Immersion is going to help you find the right direction for you.
Starting at the beginning of April we will work together for three months to help you follow through on an idea of project. Each month you get an audio lesson, a personal essay and a beautiful reflective workbook to work through, and every week.
I’ll send you a task or exercise to give you a little bit of focus. There’s also a community to connect and get support from me, and I’ll be doing a Live Q&A at the end of the 3 months too. If you want more support like email office hours and an intimate group call with me, there’s also the opportunity to upgrade to Immerse Deeper. Immersion is £90 for the 3 months, which you can pay monthly, and you can find all the information at simpleandseason.com/immersion.