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Before I became the prolific creator I am today I had failed at about 5 or 6 different creative projects from blogs to podcasts to vlogging.
And it was all because I viewed ideas as a single stream.
If I needed to write a blog I hunted for an idea. I worked through that one idea through to completion and then I started again.
Eventually I either ran out of ideas, or got bored of that particular idea and the whole process stalled time and time again.
It wasn't until I built an environment for my ideas to develop that I started to have a continuous flow of ideas.
Now I have a bunch of ideas in all different stages. Some are new and ready to explore. Others are fully built and I can keep harvesting content from them.
Every idea starts as a spark, but they can disappear fast if you don't have a place to capture them. This is why I built my writing inbox—a place to throw any and all random thoughts into when I have them. It doesn’t matter if the idea is half-baked or sounds ridiculous. The goal is to capture it before it escapes.
I have ideas & notes that I've taken while reading come into my writing inbox as well as random shower & walking thoughts. Basically my writing inbox is a catchall for every random thought or idea. A place to get them out of my head, part them and know that I can explore them when I have the time.
This means I always have an every growing bank of ideas that I can work on.
At this stage I don't worry about wether ideas are good or not. It’s just like a big brain dump of my thoughts—some will become something big, others might be nonsense. And that’s fine.
This helps me reserve judgement. I used to judge every idea and that just immediately stopped the flow of ideas. But giving myself permission to just catch everything and then sort it out later means I have more ideas than ever.
And even though it's called an inbox I don't treat it exactly like an inbox. I don't start at the top and work on idea in order. I treat it more as a lucky dip. I browse around looking for the idea that sparks me the most and work on that one.
Most people try to go from Writing Inbox straight to Workbench and I think that's a huge mistake.
“Ideas—by definition—are always fragile. If they were resolved, they wouldn't be ideas"... Jony Ive.
Your ideas need time & attention - especially when they are little. They are fragile. And if you try to move them into production too early it's going to be a disaster for the idea and for you. You need time to explore the idea, without rushing it. Letting it grow & develop over time.
When you give your ideas time - they'll turn out much better.
And this is what I use my greenhouse for.
Just like a physical greenhouse in a garden is used to nurture those small seeds. My greenhouse is an environment where fragile ideas come to grow and thrive.
Once an idea catches my attention from the writing inbox I move it to the greenhouse and start writing about it and exploring it. This doesn't usually happen in one sitting. It might take days, weeks or even months for an idea to mature.
I remember as a young girl my parents were avid gardeners. They loved to get out early on a weekend morning and just potter in the garden. Pulling out some weeds, watering some plants, trimming branches. It's one of my favourite childhood memories - just hanging out in the garden with parents.
And it's exactly how I imagine what my idea greenhouse is like.
Everyday I jump in and have a look at the ideas that are building & get to work on them:
Some days I’ll dig deep into a particular idea, exploring it from different angles. Other days, I’ll just float through my ideas, giving each one a bit of thought. There’s no pressure here to “finish” anything. It’s all about nurturing potential and seeing what grows.
Some ideas won’t ever make it out of the greenhouse. Maybe the spark dies, or maybe I just lose interest. That is OK too. Not every idea is meant to be, but at least I have given it time and attention to let it become something if it needs to.
Once an idea has matured, I move it to the workbench. This is where ideas get built into something real. Whether it’s a blog post, a video, or a new project, this is the place where it all comes together.
Up until now I haven't thought about an idea as 'content.' It's simply an idea I'm exploring. This helps me to reserve the judgement that often comes from writing to produce something. When it's new - it needs tender loving care. But once it's grown it can handle being formed into content.
Thinking about ideas seperate to content first means that you can take a single idea and turn it into multiple kinds of content and explore many different angles. So you end up with way more content than if you just shipped it as one idea = one content.
I can't tell you how easy it is to create content when you have a bank of ideas you have already explored. The workbench is all about the art of communication. I can go deep on hooks and headlines and really refine my idea into a great shareable piece of content.
Ideas need the right environment to grow. By creating an ecosystem for your ideas you'll find your ideas flow more easily from that initial spark into loads of content ideas.
