I feel like I’ve been talking about a lot of sad things lately and I just want to flip the scrip to something I struggle with regularly: Too many ideas.

As soon as I get a new problem or a new client to solve, my brain goes in five thousand different directions and ends up giving me five thousand different different answers. Do you know what’s not helpful in the least? Five thousand different answers. Too many ideas can sink you just as fast as too few ideas. It takes too much time to curate, and a client won’t know what to do with five thousand different answers to their one singular problem.

Your ability to focus yourself while doing this and/or being able to curate it quickly to come up with the best solution will set you apart. It will make you more likely to come up with a creative solution, and you will have already thought through all of the pitfalls.

But how do you go from too many ideas to the right idea? Let’s take a look.

Let it go

I’m obsessed with practices and crafts that are now nearly extinct. And that’s how I decided I badly needed notecards. I would write letters, I told myself. And they would be lovely. So much better than cold emails.

That meant I could let my brain tackle the problem of getting notecards. If you want to see how much of a problem my brain is, let me tell you what it came up with: I would make paper. Because regular paper is so last year. I researched all of the steps needed to make paper. I had lots of ideas of what to include within this paper I was making so that it would be beautiful. Of course I researched fountain pens. And I found someone on Etsy who does sealing wax stamps, so I could do a custom stamp for the seals I would put on these notecards. This is not everything. This is just a list of some things I would still like to do eventually.

Because I knew there was no time limit on this project, I let my brain wander and it came up with a very specific plan that would have cost me a ton of money. Once it was done and I had all of the particulars, I started hacking away at it and came up with a much more financially sound plan that included Canva and a printer. There was no homemade paper, no wax seals and definitely no fountain pens. But the journey to this place where there could be was enjoyable.

When you have an unlimited time like I did with these notecards, go all out. Let your brain be as ridiculous as it wants to be, especially if you’re having fun with it. But this requires you to be completely brutal when it comes to slashing it to a reasonable solution. If you are going to let your brain go, make sure you have the stomach to bring it back and get rid of most of its dreams.

And yes, the notecards were lovely, despite not being on homemade paper.

Give yourself parameters

Have you ever had a client give you no parameters whatsoever? And then you have to kinda guess what the real parameters are? Because there is no way that there are no parameters? Yes, it’s my nightmare. JUST TELL ME WHAT THE PARAMETERS ARE.

Anyway, if you could do whatever you want with their marketing, life would be different. It would be so simple. In reality, that’s not true. Social media marketing is difficult and full of lots of stuff you eventually bump up against. So if you’re in a situation where a client says to do whatever, it would be smart to get real about the situation.

What are the real parameters? Look at the client history and their expectations. List out what the audience has responded to in the past. Have your goals and audience persona handy. Anything that will help you to really figure out what is needed next for this client. Write it all down so your brain will really take all of this information in. It then becomes a true puzzle with right and wrong answers, instead of a free-for-all. And as soon as your brain starts treating it like a puzzle with a right answer, it will work within that puzzle.

So instead of doing all of that curating after you let a firehose loose, you are doing the front work. Then your brain knows that this is the only place that your ideas should exist. It’s not as much fun as letting that firehose loose. But it’s a great way to do this if you don’t have a ton of time to work with.

Get yourself focused first

This has a lot in common with the previous approach. Take a moment before you do any work and do whatever it is that gets you centered again. The goal is to make sure you’re not so excited that you’re out of control. That is what usually leads to my too many ideas.

Instead of going crazy with all of those ideas, I take a moment to do some deep breathing until I feel like my emotions are more under control. Or I explore the opposite of the emotion I am feeling so that I can move my emotions more to the center. I’ve found the more centered I am, the more I am able to prevent myself from going crazy with ideas. In most cases, I couple this with the parameters and become an efficient marketer again.

How are you working with your tendency to have too many ideas?