Idea Overload

So I’m halfway through my last two weeks at my old job, and starting to build on a big pile of IDEAS. While I’ve been slowly gathering these thoughts for a while, maybe my brain feels some kind of urgency now that there is an actual date for when my steady paycheck will go away, and I’m now imagining up a wider range of project plans at an exponential rate. It’s almost overwhelming at times, so I’m trying to harness this into something actually useful instead of distracting. I guess today’s post is another attempt to try and work through some self reflections and methods to deal with this effectively.

I know part of my issue lately is too much information input without properly processing it and applying it. Last weekend I went to a public library for the first time in a few years, mostly looking for some basic beginner books on self-employment and starting up a business, just to get a handle on things like finances, productivity, etc. I left with a pretty hefty stack and somehow already blazed through five books, even during a pretty busy work week. While there was some great info in there, it was also a fire hose of things to think about. Going forward, I think I really need to get better about taking notes and applying some of the best bits of each to my own situation. I think my “collector” mindset is hurting my cause in a way, as it feels good to be amassing this big list of books I have finished, but I really need to consolidate all the useful knowledge into something that I can refer to continually. Otherwise I basically forget everything within a few days. I’ll admit I haven’t spent a ton of time researching a good solution yet, but I found something earlier this morning called the Zettelkasten Method that might be worth a deeper look. If anyone else out there has any tips for harnessing knowledge effectively, I’m all ears.

Beyond that, now I’m also at the stage of gathering all my ideas and to-dos and prioritizing. I’ve been pretty good at least capturing ideas as they come, writing them down, saving something in my phone, or using productivity apps to make big lists and categories of things. But they are definitely all scattered about and spread around different places and formats, so I think the next step is to consolidate it into one spot to really get a bigger picture of where I can go and how to best invest my time. I’m kind of leaning towards trying Notion to really get everything organized but I’m pretty new to it and learning my way around how it will best work for me. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically a site where you can create a wiki-like system to organize whatever you like, and it seems very versatile and customizable (which also can be a bit overwhelming if you let it).

I also have to catch myself to not over-plan. It’s all too easy to spend a ton of time planning, organizing, absorbing new knowledge, but then you may find there is no energy left to actually DO THE THING. In a lot of cases, it’s probably faster to just try (and likely fail) to do something without over-analyzing a million different ways how to do it perfectly. With creative work, it’s easy to forget how low risk a failure can be. Don’t let fear keep you from trying, when you should really be afraid of NOT trying. Sometimes if I’m hesitating on something, it helps me to think, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if this doesn’t work?” Just as an example, let’s say the idea is to start a Youtube channel. The worst thing that could happen is that you put a bunch of work into it, and nobody sees it, or maybe the few people that do see it say that it sucks. That’s not a great feeling, but on the positive side you can think of how much you learned. You got some valuable practice of creating, editing, uploading videos. You got tangible data back indicating that something isn’t getting the results you want. So now you can make adjustments to what you’re doing to see what works, whether it’s improving the quality of your videos, or maybe thinking outside the box on how to promote your channel in other places. Or maybe you discovered that you hate making videos entirely! Saying no to something and pivoting to another activity can be a great way to discover what really resonates with you. And my current mantra is definitely to stick with doing what you love, and results will follow. If my heart isn’t in it, then what am I even doing on this planet?

So one more week to go, and my schedule will open up to whatever possibility I can make for myself. I am excited that I have at least decided on one project to tackle first! In a weird “stars aligned” kind of moment I have stumbled across a retro-themed game jam starting on my exact final day at my job. Trying to throw a game together in 10 days seems like a great launching point to see what I can accomplish, and I’ll likely document and share some of the process here. Otherwise, hope you all have a wonderful week, thanks so much for being here!

Also curious if anyone out there also experienced a similar kind of creative overflow/overwhelm, and what are you doing to manage it?