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How To Decide Which Ideas To Pursue

“If you have one good idea, people will lend you twenty.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

There’s always another idea.

Another thing to pursue, explore, or create. It’s a gift…

And a curse.

Because with a constant flow of ideas that interest you and limited time to explore them, how do you choose which to pursue?

When you choose poorly, you drown in half-finished projects, wasted time, inefficiency, and regrets.

But you can tilt the odds of choosing the right ideas to pursue in your favor if you follow a few guidelines.

Choose ideas that are unique. And familiar.

Ideas need to be unique if you want people to consume them.

But completely original ideas (if there is such a thing) often struggle to gain traction with others who don’t have a reference point for them.

So your best chance at success comes from ideas that offer an original spin on a familiar concept.

Take Chobani yogurt for example.

It was unique in that it was Greek yogurt – something Americans weren’t eating at the time. But it was also familiar to those same consumers in that it was still yogurt meant to be consumed in a familiar way.

It was an original spin on a familiar concept.

Star Wars is another example.

The George Lucas masterpiece was certainly unique – nothing like it had been seen before – but it was rooted in familiar archetypes of Western films and pulp stories like Flash Gordon.

Ideas that feature unique twists on the familiar tend to be worth exploring.

Choose ideas that will succeed…even if they fail.

There’s no guarantee an idea will succeed.

But some ideas are guaranteed to create value for you even in failure.

Ideas that allow you to acquire skills, experience, and build assets regardless of their ultimate success, are ones worth pursuing.

For example, starting a blog doesn’t guarantee you’ll find an audience for that blog.

But writing every day does guarantee your writing will improve.

While the blog’s success isn’t guaranteed, there’s an associated skill development that is.

It’s an idea that may not succeed, but can’t completely fail either.

Just because an idea is good, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

A (relatively) smart, (relatively) hard working person who’s willing to learn can turn most ideas into success.

But that doesn’t mean every idea you have is worth pursuing.

Avoid the trap of pursuing an idea solely because you see opportunity in it.

Creating a newsletter about 401k management might be a great idea, but unless you have a passionate interest in 401k management, that’s not an idea you should pursue.

Your time and effort is limited so you must choose carefully how to spend it. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you need to do it.

You can be good at a lot of things, but you can only be great at that which aligns with your true interests.

Choose ideas based on your excitement for the work, not just the result.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to earn money, get attention, or change the world.

But potential results shouldn’t dictate the ideas you pursue.

The majority of time you spend on an idea will be spent on the work, so you need to be more drawn to that than the results.

Once upon a time I wanted to become a screenwriter.

I had some talent for it and got some good early feedback, but struggled to force myself to write.

I came to realize I was more excited by the results of a potential screenwriting career – not having a 9-to-5 job, doing creative work, etc. – than the actual work.

Meanwhile, on the side I got into social media, content strategy, and digital marketing.

I found that work much easier because I was excited by the actual work and not just the results that could come from it.

The majority of time you spend on an idea is spent on the work that idea requires and not on the results it generates.

Keep that in mind when you choose what to pursue.

Choose ideas you can explain.

Great ideas are simple ideas.

If you can’t explain an idea to others in a simple way, then it’s probably not a great idea.

This doesn’t mean you need to abandon it, but you do need to give it more thought.

Because when you can’t explain an idea in simple terms, it means your idea isn’t fully formed.

The process of learning to be able to explain an idea to others – even people who aren’t experts in your field – forces you to analyze the idea and determine whether it’s worth our time.

If you can’t ever explain it clearly, then you know to move on.

But if you get to a point where you can explain it in simple terms, it means you have a vision for it that can guide its development and increase its chances of success.