A weird thing happened to me on Wednesday morning. My hard drive failed in my MacBook Pro. And when I say “failed”, I really mean my MBP attempted flight from 5 feet only to find a crash landing with my stone tile in the kitchen. Luckily…a little bent case and a failed HD was the only damage and that is what they make backups for right?! One call into macsales.com and I had a shinny new 320 gig, 7200 rpm drive on the way overnight. Now…I do have a backup tower that hangs out in my office closet, but instead of panicking…I just unpluged for 48 hours (spent last night doing the restore process).
After about 10 minutes worth of being “unplugged”, I was driving my self crazy. Just because my computer is turned off crashed, does not mean my brain takes a hike with it as well. Just like any business owner, the gears keep on turning with ideas and plans for the future. Since I did not have my digital world to rely on for idea absorption…I had to turn to my trusty pen and yellow pad of paper.
To my surprise…I became wicked productive! As I continued to write down post ideas, plans for the future, development for clothing lines and other off site activities, the ideas just kept flowing! My hand actually started getting tired from the speed and pure amount of words I was throwing down on the page.
Every now and then, it is a great idea to “unplug” and separate yourself from your online world to really get the creativity flowing. Often times, we rely so much on our digital products that we forget how distracting they can be during times of creative bliss. When you are sitting in front of a blank piece of paper and only your thoughts, you have zero distractions in your pursuit to plan out your online life and business. There are no IM screens popping up, no email chimes, absolutely nothing that will derail what you are ultimately trying to accomplish.
As you continue down the path of this extreme productivity, new ideas are going to form bred off of other great ideas. It becomes an infectious disease as you continue to throw down content ideas and long term goals. Your mind is focused with only one goal at hand…getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper. With each great post idea or long term goal, it spreads and creates more incredible ideas.
After 1 hour and 6 fully filled pages, I have post ideas, marketing plans and off site promotions set all the way through 1st quarter next year! Are there going to be ideas that come up during the process that will need to be added? I am counting on it. Are there ideas on the pages that I may not go with in favor of something else that comes up? You can bet on it…business is all about adapting to changing needs. However, I can promise you that you will never hear me complain that I have run out of ideas or that I have come across a case of writers block because it is all there in black and yellow.
As you start to plan out the processes that bounce around in your cranium throughout the day…find a quiet place to unload all of those thoughts onto paper. Not only will you have all of your ideas down for easy reference, but your stress load will also decrease due to the new amount of real estate in your head. The more you try to just remember your thoughts…the more stress and problems you are going to create for yourself in the long run.
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