3 Stages Idea Jon Acuff
3 Stages Idea Jon Acuff
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@JONACUFF | J O N AC U F F.CO M
THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
serious preparation. But the truth is, thats how most of us treat our
dreams. With little or no preparation, we sit down with a blank piece
of paper or an open laptop and say, Go!
We wait there for a few frustrating minutes or hours, then give up.
Our dream is dumb. It will never work. We dont have any good ideas,
so we put the dream back on the shelf for another day or another year.
But what if working on your dream wasnt that complicated? What
if you didnt have to fear the blank piece of paper? What if big dreams
were built from a thousand small ideas?
I believe they are.
Though we long for a eureka momentfor a lightning strike of
unexpected brilliancethats not how dreams really work. The
Wright brothers started with a kite, not a plane. Our ideas need to
grow and change and mature.
And if thats going to happen, we need to change the way we think
about ideas.
In this guide, were going to discuss and dissect three very simple
stages every successful idea goes through. I didnt create these. I just
observed them during thousands of hours of experimentation. From
massive companies like The Home Depot to small businesses and
individuals with dreams, Ive worked on these same three steps.
Call it the creative process or the idea habitthe name doesnt
matter a whole lot. The results do, and if you want to get results with
your ideas, this is the path to take.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
STAGE 1: IMAGINE
To talk about Imagine, we need a new definition of creativity. And its
my favorite definition. Dorothy Parker said it in the 1960s: Creativity
is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
Your mind has to be wild. You have to fill it with all kinds of differ-
ent topics from all kinds of different sourceshow a restaurant menu
is written, something your kid said, something a boss at work men-
tioned in the hall, a book you read, a song that inspires youand you
fill it, fill it, fill it.
You create this rich, wild amount of ideas in your head. And you
have the ability to look and see the relationships between them, to
see how theyre connected in a fresh way somebody else hasnt seen
before. That, for me, is the definition of creativity.
Knowing that, how do you work on Imagine? How do you deliber-
ately create and generate more ideas for your dream?
Here are some ways I think you can focus on the Imagine step.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
@JONACUFF | J O N AC U F F.CO M
THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
@JONACUFF | J O N AC U F F.CO M
THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
thinking, and thats okay. But if you give some time and space to the
amazing machine called your brain, youll start to generate ideas.
Thats how you create your own think tank.
BE AWESOME LATER
Have you ever had an idea you thought was good? You liked the idea,
and it seemed reasonable, maybe even a little amazing. But then,
when you went to write it down, you couldnt. Before your pen even
hit paper, you stopped yourself and self-edited. The idea never saw
the light of day.
Thats the great temptation in the Imagine stage of ideas.
Dont confuse idea generation with idea critique. This isnt the time
for you to critique your ideas. You shouldnt ask these ideas to be
good right now. Were focused on productivity. Were focused on
quantity, not quality.
Quality will come later. Thats one of the principles I use all the
time with my writing. When I do a first draft, I say, Later Jon will
be amazing. Today Jon will just be productive. And I give Today Jon
the freedom to just write. He can be awesome later. So when youre
in Imagine mode, dont try to analyze your ideas.
Suspend the part of you that wants to critique ideas, because youll
frighten them from coming out.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
@JONACUFF | J O N AC U F F.CO M
THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
this company? Shell reply, Well, I had a problem and thought that
maybe I wasnt the only one who had that same issue.
She was right. If its exciting to you, chances are its exciting to a
whole lot of other people. If its frustrating to you, chances are other
people are frustrated by it too.
To start seeing your own ideas as valuable ideas, ask yourself some
of these questions:
What specific things made me frustrated last week?
What am I excited about right now?
If I had to write a blog about my life, what would the first post be?
Can I search my own life for an idea?
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
Imagine what you could do if you set a $25 idea budget every
month. Where would you invest that? If the dream really matters to
you, then its worth $25 a month, isnt it? Thats when youll start to
really see some change.
CONCLUSION
Now, if Im you, the pushback Id give to this particular section is,
Well, that whole imagine thing probably works for a writer, but my
dream is different. I want to be a nurse. I think thats a completely
fair challenge.
So lets imagine your passion is raw food. A friend of mines mom had
an amazing experience during cancer treatment with eating raw food.
And now, thats her passion. If she came to me and said, Hey, how do I
generate ideas? How do I imagine, if raw food is my passion? Where do
I go for research? Well, clearly, the first place you go is online.
I Googled the phrase raw food and got 145 million results. That
feels like an okay place to start. Id read other blogs about raw food.
Id plug into communities about raw food. Id watch YouTube videos
on the subject.
Once I got tired of virtual research, Id go to Barnes & Noble and
look at magazines about raw food. Id look at Mens Health. How do
they describe a raw food recipe? Id look at cookbooks. Id look at all
these different sources.
But lets pretend that maybe you live somewhere where you dont
have a Barnes & Noble or you dont have the Internet. You dont
even have a library. Where would you go? Youd go to one of the best
places for research: real people.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
STAGE 2: CAPTURE
Why is the Capture stage so critical? Well, this hit me a few years
ago. I had a bunch of different ideas, but my wife kept throwing them
away because they looked a lot like trash. Which is understandable
because they were trash, literally. I would write down random ideas
on Post-it notes and the backs of envelopes. She would scoop them
all up in a pile and throw them away.
Eventually I got tired of telling my wife she was throwing away great
American novels. I started doing two things: idea folders and notebooks.
The idea folders came from a guy named Jim, whom I met during
my years at The Home Depot. Up until that moment, I thought I
was really into ideas. I thought I was Jon Creativity and knew
everything there was to know about idea generation. I was wrong.
One afternoon, I saw Jim rip a photo out of a magazine and put it into
a plastic sheet within a binder. That seemed like strange behavior. I asked
him about it and he said, Well, maybe one day well shoot a product like
that. This is a really neat angle, so Im just going to put it in there.
Over the years, Jim had built up a custom library of ideas that he
used in client meeting after client meeting.
That same week, I started to keep my own binders. I had eighteen
different binders based on different topics: pharmaceutical, medical,
automotive. I did that because my passion at the time was advertising.
Every time I had an idea, Id put it in that folder so I could go back
to it later. That was one of the things that helped me start to capture
all of my ideas.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
@JONACUFF | J O N AC U F F.CO M
THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
Bottom line: I dont know what your capture method is going to be.
Im not sure how youll build it, but it needs to at least include these
three characteristics:
MAKE IT PERSONAL
It has to be custom-designed to the way you work. Theres no such
thing as a one-size-fits-all capture system. If youre a high-detail
person, make yours about the detail. If youre a visual person, figure
out a way to make your method visual.
MAKE IT EASY
If your system is not easy to use, itll become a hiding place. During
moments when youre afraid to move forward on an idea, youll just
spin your wheels in the Capture part of the process as a way to avoid
doing what you dont want to do. Youll overcomplicate it if youre
not careful. Thats the great temptation as you capture ideas. Dont
make a ridiculously complex system.
MAKE IT CONSISTENT
You know which diet doesnt work? The fifteen diets you tried in one
summer. You know which diet does work? The one you stayed faithful
to. Its the same with idea capture. Certainly, dont lock yourself into
something that doesnt work in the name of consistency though. Be
flexible, yet consistent.
Capturing is an extremely important stage of the idea process.
Dont overlook it.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
STAGE 3: EXECUTE
This is the most difficult stage, but if you really want to change the
world, you have to execute. So how do I do that? Whats my process
with execution?
Let me walk you through what I do in a normal day of writing.
Now, writing is the thing I need to execute, but yours may be
different. Your execution list might include returning client calls
or fulfilling orders or painting. Execution can come in a thousand
different shapes and sizes.
The first thing I do is gather all the resources I need for whatever
Im going to write that day. I dont want resource gathering to impact
writing time. I try my best to keep that sacred. So Ill find all the
pieces I need, gather any research online, and get it all together.
Then, Ill find an empty office in the Dave Ramsey building, a spot
where I cant be easily found and people dont come ask questions. Im
a people person, but when its time for me to write, I need to focus.
Next, Ill turn everything off. Ill turn Twitter off, and Ill turn
the Internet off. I dont have the willpower to have those open and
talking to me. Like, the little envelope that says I have a new email is
intoxicating to me. Who sent it? What is it about? That envelope is
one of my greatest enemies. So Ill turn off Outlook.
The reality is Im not a brain surgeon, but maybe you are. You
might need to be accessible twenty-four hours a day. But I can wait
an hour to have email access. Rarely have I come back after two hours
and realized, Oh my gosh, seven people died because I was offline this
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
afternoon. I had a sense that people were dying while I was executing
my dream. But man, I thought itd be, like, four at the most.
So I turn everything off, and I pick music like Explosions in the Sky
or other instrumental music. I cant listen to lyrics while Im trying
to write, because I hear those words instead of my own. But I need
some music. I always wear headphones, too, because for some reason
the act of putting on a pair of headphones helps me get into the zone.
Then I set a timer on my iPhone for an hour or two. And while
that countdown timer is going, I execute. There are six principles I
usually apply to any given moment in which I have to execute.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
You go to the beach and you suddenly want to eat a shaved ice or
go swimming. Thats probably not going to be the best place for you
to execute. If I get off a plane in Pensacola, Florida, Im smelling
coconut, not ideas being executed.
So you need to create a place to execute your ideas. Where is it
going to be? It could be Starbucks for you. Maybe you need energy
and laughter and people around. For me, I need to be quiet. I need
my space to be like my fortress of solitude.
Once you get good at it, your place can go mobile. My place is now
in airplanes. I put the headphones on. I put the music on. I dont have
Internet. Then, its time to execute.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
I said, Well then, you need to start a video blog where, every
Friday, you give a three-minute speech. Lets create a fake deadline.
Im motivated by deadlines. You probably are, too. You know how
this workshow productive are you two days before vacation? You
knock it out. You clear your calendar, or you clear your inbox. You
get it done because that vacation is coming.
I create fake deadlines all the time. And if that doesnt work, add an
audience. The reason Im able to write my blog Stuff Christians Like
so often is that I have a lot of people holding me accountable for that.
The reality is, if I dont do it that day, nobody dies. Its not that big of
a deal. But I dont want to let them down. Im trying to serve them
with this dream.
So create a fake deadline. And, when possible, add an audience for
accountability.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
So I have to build the right size bowl because Ill grow to the size
of the bowl. Figure out the right bowl size for you. Set the right time
limit so you dont waste time.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
Beyond ICE
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR TURNING
IDEAS INTO ACTIONS
As you walk through the ICE method, you
will undoubtedly find yourself needing to make
some decisions. Which projects do you focus on?
Which ideas do you execute? Which things do
you ignore?
To help you along the way, Ive included a few
tips that have helped me learn how to make better
decisions in the last few years.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
run at all. It was either the full nine miles or nothing at all, as if
running a fast three miles would not have helped.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
letter word that has the power to radically improve every blog and
tweet you ever write:
Why?
Why was I tweeting that? Why was I writing and sharing that
thought with people? What was my real motive behind that simple
sentence?
The truth is, I wrote that tweet so people who follow me would
see I had dinner with someone cool and would then by nature of
association think I was cool too. That was an ego tweet. Even worse,
it was dressed up as if it were a compliment to that musician. In
addition to hiding my true meaning behind the tweet, I also got to
pretend that I was being kind to him at the same time. But thats not
true, because if I wanted to thank him for inspiring me, I could have
sent him a direct message or a text message.
And I wasnt tweeting his name so that other people would be
exposed to his music and discover him. If that had been my motive,
there was no reason to mention that we had spent some time together.
I could have added a link to his site and said, I love the new album
by @_______. If you havent heard it, you need to!
I didnt send the tweet that night because I took the time to ask
why. I stopped to ask what my real motive was. There have been
other times when, despite brilliant books like Start with Why by
Simon Sinek and a history of ego-driven mistakes, Ive just tweeted
or just blogged without asking why.
Want to improve your blog posts? Want to improve your tweets?
Want to improve your conversations with neighbors? Want to
improve everything you decide to execute?
@JONACUFF | J O N AC U F F.CO M
THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
Take the time to ask yourself why. You might not like the answer,
but why always pays dividends if well take the time to listen.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
book and a popular movie. Maurice is known all over the world for
his book. Whats interesting is that it was accidental.
When he initially sat down to create Where the Wild Things Are, he
planned to populate the island in the story with horses. Max, the lit-
tle boy who runs away from home to the island of the monsters, was
originally supposed to go play with horses. The only problem was,
try as he might, Sendak couldnt draw horses. They just wouldnt
come out right. So as a last resort, he drew monsters.
It turned out he was awesome at drawing monsters. He drew
monsters like few people on the planet. He was designed to draw
monsters.
Can you imagine the book being as popular or celebrated if Max
had romped about the jungle with a bunch of horses? Can you
imagine how boring the movie would have been with common-
looking ponies?
Thankfully, Maurice failed so that he could succeed. He bombed
his way to finding his thing.
And you might too. The only question is, when it comes to chasing
your dream . . .
Are you ready to draw some monsters?
FUZZY GOALS
How do you take a goal from fuzzy and undefined to crystal clear
and actionable?
Heres how I handled one of my goals. I wanted to have a more grate-
ful heart one year. I think being ungrateful and entitled would be an
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Then I took that list, and I applied the items to my own life. For
instance, lets look at number 3. I run around like crazy when Im
traveling to a speaking engagement. Im nervous and excited and
focused on delivering an amazing speech. It would be really easy for
me to completely rush by the hard work that my team is doing to set
up the conferences I get to speak at. How can I make sure I have a
grateful heart in real-life situations like that?
Next, I took those real-life scenarios and turned them into actions.
For instance, one of my goals this year is to empty my thank-you
note box. It has 100 cards in it. The best part is that I dont have to
write 100 fake cards just to meet my goal. In a year, I will run into
way more than 100 people to whom I need to write a sincere, honest
thank-you card.
Next December, instead of looking at my incredibly fuzzy goal
of having a grateful heart, I can look at a hopefully empty box of
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
thank-you cards and know that I hit one of the metrics that mattered
to me.
Is walking from fuzzy goal to real action easy to do? Not always,
but I promise that the clearer your goals are, the more likely you are
to actually finish them.
DONT OVERKILL
When I was a kid, my grandmother had a simple rule about taking
us out to dinner: Shed pay for your meal if you ate the whole thing.
What I learned early on was that my eyes were often bigger than my
stomach. Especially at cafeteria-style restaurants where I could grab
plates of food as I walked down the aisle. Spaghetti? Yes. Hamburger?
Yes. Bread sticks? Yes. Cake? Yes. Pie? Yes. I grabbed and grabbed
and grabbed until I could barely carry my tray. It was too much, and
trying to eat everything usually made me sick.
The same thing happens with our goals. We brainstorm crazy lists
of resolutions and try to accomplish all of them. We dont come
up with a collection of five great goals. Instead, we come up with a
collection of fifty good goals. Then they all clamor for our attention
at once, and we drop all of them.
This year, instead of listing twenty-five things youre going to knock
out, I challenge you to be a surgeon with your list of resolutions.
Cut and edit and remove again and again. As you look at your short
list of goals, you might even feel lazy. I did this week as I worked on
my next set of goals. One of my goals is to read one nonfiction book
a month. Thats only twelve books! Last year I started at least three
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
times that amount. But how many did I actually finish? Probably less
than twelve.
I know it sounds crazy, but the voice of laziness is going to pipe
up as you get ready to execute. Fear hates the idea of you finishing
something that matters to you, and fear will use any distraction to
knock you off course. Ignore that voice. Having only a few goals
doesnt make you lazy. It makes you focused.
And if you only remember one thing from this idea, remember
this: The worst thing that happens if you start with too few goals
is that, midyear, you realize you completed them all and you get to
add more.
The worst thing that happens if you start with too many goals is
you get overwhelmed and quit working on all of them.
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THE 3 STAGES OF EVERY AWESOME IDEA
closets in our house. The closet space was just so ample. Nobody
says that.
Our kids will, however, say, We could walk to school. So we made
a lore decision. We thought about the story theyll tell.
Today, tomorrow, next week, you will face countless decisions.
You will have a million choices before you. And in some of those
situations youll have the chance to make a lore decision, to pick
the option that will create a story youre proud of, youre excited
about, and youll remember. When you have that chance, make
that choice.
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