Idea Nugget Audit
Feeling a lil’ short on new ideas?
Run an idea nugget audit on all of the old ones first.
The other day, I was working on my social content and was searching for an idea I had written in my phone.
I couldn’t remember how I phrased the original idea in the note - dammit, I hate when that happens! - so I ended up manually thumbing through my Notebooks app and was greeted by the 4 gazillion, uncategorized idea nuggets listed in the “General” category.
Sweet Jesus, I have a lot of nuggets written down! Some of these ideas are about 2 years old, too!
Although this is certainly a first-world storytelling/marketing problem that I’m not exactly mad at, it was preventing me from finding what I was originally searching for in the app.
But then, a funny thing happened.
As I was sifting through the ideas one-by-one and reading the nuggets to myself, I started to riff some additional ideas.
And then, I moved some of the ideas from the back burner into my STUFF TO WRITE folder, which means they are next on the list to be developed and distributed as either social posts or blog articles.
In addition - and just as importantly - I ran across several idea nuggets that, quite frankly, made no sense as I read them to myself, so I trashed them.
Less is more when it comes to idea nuggets!
And this got me thinking; how many other magical ideas do I have that are completely buried under a sea of ideas that most likely won’t make the cut?
What originally started out as a search for one specific phrase I had written down 5 months ago in a moment of inspiration has morphed into a full-blown idea nugget audit.
I spent a couple hours cleaning up, sorting, re-categorizing and developing a bunch of idea nuggets that I had completely fallen off my radar over the past couple years.
I bring this up because I run into many speakers, authors and other expert-based business owners who have trouble keeping a consistent content calendar.
And, a large part of that issue stems from the fact that they are not sure what to write.
But overwhelm can be squashed with strategy.
If you find yourself struggling to generate ideas to develop for your social feeds and blog articles, look through the pile of forgotten ideas.
Ideas that once were the apple of your eye for even a second, but have been completely forgotten.
Whether they’re written on post-its, in your phone, in a notebook, on a white board, whatever, give them a double take and see what happens.
Does this mean that you immediately be struck with a ton of inspiration from these ideas?
Not necessarily.
In my case, I threw out way more than I kept and further developed.
But, that’s not the point.
The point is that if you’re stuck, you can give your idea muscles a boost with jumper cables simply by thumbing through ideas that you once thought were awesome.
The moment you offer yourself some creative space with this endeavor, the ideas written down can potentially spark completely different ideas that may or may not have anything to do with what you’ve written.
And these ideas might be more substantial and compelling than the ones that preceded it.
Which means you now have something meaty with which to work.
Although the original idea nugget will never be developed beyond the words you have in that note, it, at least, helped spark an idea that you do plan to leverage as content in some shape or form.
The point of this is not to justify the value of your old ideas; it’s to get your ass in gear to write content today that you can post in the future.
So keep this in mind the next time you find yourself spacing out while staring at the blinking cursor on your screen, hoping that it will somehow generate a couple words to get you going.
You probably have enough inspiration on hand to last a lifetime - use it!
I talk a lot about content creation in my Idea Nugget Incubator Program, which helps speakers, authors and other expert-based businesses to craft a content creation strategy and understand the relationship between the written word and the visual.
Interested in reading more about it? Check it out here.
As an alternative, you can sign up for my blog where I share a wide variety of insights regarding the relationship between the written word and the visual.
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