With new ideas, you progress. With no new ideas, you can’t change much of anything.
Endless back and forth, yes-no-maybe thinking and indecision can all add up to confusion, and confusion justifies indecision. It can become an endless, closed loop.
Do not think that waiting for better ideas is a good idea. Better ideas do not always show up.
I know plenty of managers who have been waiting for a long time.
What to do instead of waiting:
- Take any topic, something important that you are/were hoping to do.
- Track back a few weeks and review what your attitude and outlook were around that topic.
- Notice that the kinds of ideas you got reflect the attitude you had – see the link? It never fails to be true.
Your outlook may be positive, negative, uncertain or anything in between. The ideas you get will always support that outlook.
Action Item:
Be on the lookout, not so much for the ideas. Rather, look first at your underlying attitude toward the topic. This is not as hard as you may think.
Try it for one week on one topic. Track your attitude and the ideas that came to you. Find the correlation.
Eventually, you will be able to “refresh” your idea bank anytime you want.
