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How Do You Capture Your Irresistible Ideas?

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Be Irresistible Instead

Every great movie star did a movie or two for the cash until he or she could do the movies he or she really wanted to do. That’s one thing. It’s fine to do if we know that’s what we’re doing. It’s a skill-building, bill-paying short-term strategy that works to keep us solvent.

But, if we’re not careful, we can get so busy doing, that we lose sight of the end game — the strategic goal out there on the horizon. While we’re busy making money to pay the rent, we can have outstanding ideas and let them get away while we work at things that don’t inspire us.

Work without inspiration steals energy. It keeps us in the same place or moving in the wrong direction.

What powers and fuels a career or a business is irresistible, value-added, real WOW ideas — what folks need, wish, and dream for — can’t live without ideas. Even if you’re working on something that’s boring, are looking for your own irresistible ideas that will head you to your own horizon? Here’s how to know one …

  1. An irresistible idea addresses the practical and the emotional simultaneously. Think of a great car that makes you feel something when you drive it. Irresistible ideas appeal to the child and the adult in us.

    2. I bought my Toyota MR-2 Spyder for many reasons. It had great performance specs — practical. It has its flaws — 1.9 cubic feet of storage space. The WOW is the faux titanium door handles — emotional. No other car has them, not any Porsche, Ferrari, BMW two-seater. I know. I look inside them all. They all look boring to me. Those door handles make my car look like it cost 3 times what it cost. It will also allow me to resell it much higher. And the dealer was willing to sell and service it at a great price — it fit into my life.

    An irresistible idea fits easily into our lives. We don’t have to work to buy that product, to learn a lot use it, or to explain it when we share it with our friends. Irresitible save us time, saves us money, or gives us a sense of ease and comfort.

  2. Irresistible ideas are in the details, not in giant bells and whistles.

    3. Every car has an engine and four wheels. Trying to improve on those gets you into trying to be original. Original is risky and expensive. Why not piggyback on what has been tested and perfected. Irresistible ideas come in the back and the side doors. They approach things from the inside out. They make things work better, feel softer, stop being a pain. Irresistible takes one part and makes it elegantly simpler.

    Irresistible ideas are joyfully unexpected. I still love the person who invented the wireless mouse.

  3. Irresistible ideas are authentic. Spectacular ideas can’t be knocked off with the same effect, because they came from customer-centered thinking. Gotta be Apple to make the iPod. Gotta be Iain Dodsworth to make TweetDeck. I can’t build your event or product your way, because you are the special sauce that makes it just right.

The most irresistible ideas come from where your passion and your intelligence cross with the places you spend the most time. We have more ideas than we might actually realize and when we’re busy working on something tiring it’s easy to forget them.

How do you capture your irresistible ideas?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Holiday Bloggers' Block — What to Get to Let Ideas Come to You!!

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Get Out of Your Head!

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When people speak of writer’s block, often what they mean is that they don’t know what to write about. Without that goal, they can’t get started. It happens to bloggers too.

Whether we’re writing a single blog post or setting out to start a new blog, we have to know what we’re planning to communicate and the direction we want that communication to go.

In other words, we need something to say.

Get some help . . . by letting the ideas come to you.

  • Get out of your head and away from your computer. Ideas form and grow in our subconscious — quit thinking. The harder we try to access ideas the less likely we are to get through.
  • Get moving. Physical movement — walking, taking a shower, unpacking boxes, cleaning the refrigerator — gets our thinking mildly distracted by tasks we know how to do. That releases our subconscious — the proverbial back burner — to use the information we already have to think something new.
  • Get some input. Call a friend. Read a book. Go to a movie. Immerse yourself in something rich with thoughts, story, and color. Leave the quest for ideas back with your computer.
  • Get some perspective. Go back to read your archives, even if your blog is only one month old. You’ll see how you’ve grown and while you’re reading, you’ll remember what sort of ideas draw you in.
  • Get some sleep. Take a 20-minute power nap. Don’t sleep longer. It’s not an escape. It’s a task. Before you close your eyes, ask yourself to have a passel of ideas when you awake.

Ideas tend to hide when we try to hunt them. Those we find seem shallow and less than appealing. Ideas and people have that one huge thing in common. They’re easier to work with when they come to you.

Get it? Good.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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How to Play Follow the Leader to Kick Start Your Brain

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Business, Blogs, Living

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Did you ever play that game — Follow the Leader — in school? The person in front has an idea, and everyone else does the same thing. You might think it’s a bunch of redundancy. Most times it is.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Here’s a recipe to use this game to kick start your brain.

How to Play Follow the Leader to Kick Start Your Brain

In my class, we made our own rules. The game was not only more interesting. It was a WHOLE LOT more fun! My secret is that I’ve used the premises of this silly game to kick start my brain in every job I’ve ever had.

  • Look around for the great leaders, the great thinkers, you admire.
  • Follow the leaders.
    • Follow the folks who have ideas.
    • Follow the folks who have confidence.
    • Follow the folks who are positive.
    • Follow the folks who are jazzed about what they do.

    Follow the folks who know where they are going.

  • Pick one idea from one of the leaders you follow.
    • Take it apart. Put it back together.
    • Look at the idea from every direction you can.
    • Find the parts that are only like the leader. Find the parts that are also like you.

    Get to know the idea at a cellular level.

  • Take one tiny bit of that idea and replace it.
    • If they’re on a tennis court, move to a movie theater.
    • Move the idea to somewhere you understand.

    In other words, make the idea your own.

  • Here’s the crucial part: Don’t try to write . . . play with the idea. While you do that also do something else that suits you:
    • Listen to music.
    • Go for walk.
    • Take a shower.
    • Dance in an elevator.
    • Clean the refrigerator.

    You know what works.

  • Follow your heart to make the idea your own.

Absolutely, positively do not go back to the source once you’ve started to play with the idea . . . until you’ve made the idea your own. Then all that’s left is to write, tell, or present your thoughts, and to remember to thank the leader who was your inspiration.

You get the idea. Actually with a little practice, my guess is that you’ll be getting more than one.

How do you usually kick start your brain?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related
I Have an Idea — I Have Lots of Them!
Don’t Hunt IDEAS — Be an Idea Magnet

I Have an Idea — I Have Lots of Them!

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Any first grade teacher will tell you. . .

some days, some times of the year, what you planned just isn’t working. The kids are one place, and you’re in another one.

Any actor, any writer, any artist who performs for an audience, will tell you the same thing. Parents know it. Managers know it. The folks who care for animals know it too.

Ask any marketer. I bet you’ll hear that customers don’t behave according to plan.

When I used to work in an office, I called certain times of the year “karma-skew,” because they were predictably off. Those were by no means the only ones when it seemed that most folks in the building were, well, . . . a little bit . . . um . . . zany. I only wish. What we really were was bored and cranky.

Since the time that the world began, humans have had our explanations for this phenomena . . . the planets are misaligned. . . . The sun is breaking out in spots.

Any first grade teacher knows it happens before a rainstorm, or when the sky clears, or when there’s going to be a vacation day, or when it’s the first day back, or a special event, or hundred million other everyday catastrophes and celebrations.

Who cares why? It just does. A time comes when we need to change things up.

When it does . . . you set the plan aside, and you say, “I have an idea!”

Actually, I have lots of them. I have ideas about having ideas, about making friends, about being jazzed and productive — all things that are fun!

So let’s put the heavy thinking aside. Here’s a great place to start.

What’dya think? Good idea? Are you ready to come along?

Liz's Signature

1000+ Already Brainstormed Tweaks and Ideas

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Yea!! Look at This List!

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If you’re looking for ways to tweak your blog, your brand, or your business for better performance, this list will save you the time of compiling ideas. Consider this a major checklist. Take what you like and ignore the rest.

BONUS: I couldn’t resist including this one, though it’s not related to most blogs.

The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

–ME :Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

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10 Ways to Start a Blog Post — 01-29-07

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Start with a Few Words

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Sometimes a few words can get a whole lot started.

  1. When I look at the people around me . . .
  2. If I could, I’d invent . . .
  3. It happens the same way every time . . .
  4. When I sit down with the news every morning, . . .
  5. Every relationship has an ROI. . . .
  6. When I was kid, I always thought that by now . . .
  7. Can you help me out here? Is this a new thing? . . .
  8. In this economy, anyone . . .
  9. If you want to have a meaningful conversation with . . .
  10. At this very moment, somewhere in the world, . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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