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How long does it take you before you actually make an idea come to life? 3 days? 1 week or more? The thing about ideas is if you leave them hanging on your mind, saying that you’ll get back to it later, later becomes never. You lose the idea, you lose the inspiration, you lose the opportunity that comes with it. You might say that you don’t have enough time, or you don’t have the materials to do it, but is it really necessary? Sometimes, the best way to be productive is to do it now. Not later, not tomorrow, but now.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I want to talk about going from having an idea about something to first iteration.

I was doing some virtual coworking the other day and I'd set a goal for myself to create a workbook. And this virtual coworking session was a four-hour session. It's something I do on a regular basis with a select team. I'd set it as my overall goal. Normally during the four-hour session, you can have a base goal and a stretch goal. I thought this particular workbook was going to take me the whole four hours. So, I set it as my base goal and I didn't set a stretch goal. Well, forward about an hour and I realized that actually, the workbook wasn't going to take me as long as thought and maybe I should plug in a stretch goal.

So, in this particular coworking environment that I work in, this virtual coworking session, we do speaker sessions every other Pomodoro. They asked me to do a speak session because they said, "Well, to start with you said you weren't sure you're going to hit your goal and then all of a sudden you're speeding past it. What happened?" And so, they asked me really critical questions. One, when did I come up with the idea that I had to do a workbook? And I was like, "Oh, yesterday." And I go, "Oh, so you're getting on it today?" And I'm like, "Well, yes, because I kind of had some imaginary deadlines and I wanted to get it out of the way." So, I had this idea to do a workbook and then I set aside time when I was going to do it. After that, I did a little bit of research on other workbooks but I try not to do too much because I don't want to feel like I'm copying. I didn't know how I wanted this workbook to look. To start with I was obsessed about the sort of aesthetics of it rather than the content.

So, after I stopped thinking about the aesthetics I was like, "Okay, what do I want, what do I want this web book to achieve?" I was like, "I had a goal and then I sort of thought about it in a different way, who do I want to use this workbook and what do I want them to achieve? And then it clicked. So, I ended up writing a whole list of questions that people who would be looking to use these workbook would be asking and then answering those questions along with hints and tips and questions for them so they could also work through this particular problem that they were going to have. And this workbook was going to help them work through it and solve it or at least give them answers and drill down a little bit better so they more fully understand what they were getting into with this particular topic. Which is great.

Then I had to go back again because I just had this whole list of questions and then go back and write a little blurb to each question to explain why I'm asking the question rather than just here's a list of questions, answer my questions. It was a case of explaining the reasoning behind the question and what you would get out of answering the question. Then I had to go back and format it and make it look pretty. And make it into a pdf and all that good stuff. But I went from idea to iteration and almost completed it, to be honest with you in 24 hours. And that was a workbook and I don't, I've never really made too many workbooks before. I've done one. But that already sort of had a format and already a framework for me to use. This is just me winging it.

The person who was interviewing me for the speaker was very, told me something that I hadn't realized. He said, "You just created this thing and you're talking about it's like no big deal. In fact, the thing you were worried about was the formatting but you just created this 20 odd page document for other people to use and for you it was no big thing. So, I went from an idea to an iteration fairly fairly quickly. This is something that people get bogged down with because what happens is, they have an idea, they research a lot. They research some more. Get down three or four or five different rabbit holes because, "Oh, the internet." Then they ask people advice even though if one is a different situation and then they kind of sort of start a thing and by this time six months has gone past. That doesn't help anybody. You can't learn unless you fail. You will fail by doing. Or you will succeed by doing.

So, the idea is to go from idea to iteration as quickly as you can using the very bare minimum and basics. So, instead of figuring out, "Oh, I need x, y, and z, to get stuff done and make it look pretty." Just figure out what you need to get it done. Then iterate it. Then you can learn. Then you can change it. Then you can do a 2.0 version. It's basically what happened with this podcast. I just did it. I had an idea and I just cobbled it together and I've learned stuff along the way. And maybe I should do an episode of what I've learned from podcasting for two years. Maybe I'll do that.

So, thank you for listening. That's how you can go from idea to iteration as quickly as feasibly possible. This is Janice from The Career Introvert. Thank you so much for listening. I am helping people, and introverts to be specific, amplify their voices through podcasting, publishing, public speaking, and general personal branding. If you have any questions for me please email me at janice@thecareerintrovert.com.