What do you do with your great ideas? What happens to every invention you think of? What happens to the ideas you have for a book? What happens to all those little ideas you have to increase productivity or decrease costs? Are these little stones cut and polished until they shine like gemstones or do they sit and languish until you forget that they were gems and discard them as worthless rocks? If you’re trashing these diamonds in the rough, you need to create a system to make sure that you never mistake a ruby for a piece of red glass.
The best way to make sure that no great ideas slip through your fingers is to make a tickler file. Tickler files can be pretty easy to set up. All you need is a card file and a bunch of index cards. I have a little black box that holds 3×5 cards. I also cut up a couple of index cards to make dividers with tabs to maintain some semblance of order to system that’s little more than a collection of random thoughts at this point. You can have as many or as few categories as you’d like and you can feel free to add or delete categories as needed.
Now that you have your tickler file set up, grab a stack of index cards and start writing! Write down every idea for every invention, book, or whatever you’ve been thinking about. When you’re done, go back to each card and write down the questions you have about that idea. Do you need to figure out how an invention could be put together? Do you need a more efficient system at work but haven’t quite figured out what it could be? Write these concerns on the card. Over time you’ll notice that so many questions and comments have accumulated that an action plan for your idea now seems clear. At that point you can take your idea out of your tickler file and turn in into a project. Your rock is now on it’s way to becoming a diamond!
Most people have ideas and think, “If only I could make it happen.” With this system, you have a way to make your ideas realities almost automatically! Make sure you review your tickler file every week. You’ll be surprised at all the new comments you can add!
There’s one more facet we’ve yet to cover: long term goals. What do you do with items like “renovate my home” or “buy a new car”? You can’t have a nebulous item like “get $25,000” on an action plan. How do we organize these goals so that they can be achieved one day? Find out in Someday Lists for Fun and Profit.
