I have about 5 ideas a day. Now, I’m not talking just ideas, like “oh, I think I’ll go for a coffee” or “maybe I should email so and so”. I’m talking IDEAS. Business ideas, life ideas, ideas for things that are going to make the world a better place to live in. Think about it, at 5 ideas a day, that’s 25 ideas in a business week, 35 ideas if you count the weekend. Multiply that by 52 and that’s a lot of ideas per year.

However, that’s the problem with ideas. They’re ideas. Now, I’m not saying my ideas are bad. Far from it. Some of my ideas are ridiculous, of course, some of them are possibly stupid. Some of them are unattainable and some of them, if I do say so myself, are absolutely freaking brilliant. Again, that’s the problem. They’re ideas.

No matter how brilliant, how stupid, however anything you want to call them, they’re just ideas and until you put them into practice, that’s where they live. In idea land. In your head, where you’re not doing anything about them. So how do you rectify that? Well, as much as I hate to say it, stop having ideas. Or ignore them. Pick one out of the however many you have in a year and pick one to actually do something with, because if you don’t, you’ll have all these ideas, you’ll never do anything with them and you’ll grow old thinking “but I had such brilliant ideas when I was young.”

I know picking one idea above all the others is easier said than done, because obviously, I’m saying it but I haven’t been doing it. I have so many ideas. I have ideas for blogs, for websites, I have ideas for my life, my house and my business, but I’m going to try really hard to take a step back and scale it down. I’m going to work on just a couple of these ideas and put the time into them that they deserve to make them become a reality.

How am I going to do that? Well, again, easier said than done I’ve been thinking about this… I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Once I’ve managed to whittle my idea list down to about 15, here are the questions I’ll be asking myself to get that down to just one. OK, maybe two.

• Is it exciting? When you think about a certain idea, does your head explode? Do you wake up, stop dragging your feet and want to get to work right away?
• Is it progressive? I use the word progressive here where you might think I should be saying unique. However, your idea doesn’t have to be unique. But if it isn’t, you had better make sure you’re reinventing whatever it is. When you aren’t the first to do something people will automatically copmare you to your predecessor. If your idea is progressive, you can blow the previous competition out of the water.
• Is it sustainable? Is your idea the kind of thing you can see yourself still doing in a few years time? If you’re planning a business, hell, if you’re even just planning a renovation, you should make sure that the project you’re about to undertake will still be a good idea down the road.
• Is it expensive? Yeah, yeah, you have to spend money to make money. But you don’t have to fork out a hundred grand on a feeling. If your idea is something you can start off investing time rather than money into, you’ll give yourself the time to prove your idea while building up sweat equity and credibility to investors.
• Is it profitable? Money isn’t everything and I”m rapidly turning into the kind of person who values my happiness over my quality of life. But if your idea is great enough for you to invest your time and energy into, you should be looking to profit from it.

Once I’ve whittled down my ideas, I’ll shed some light on one or two of the best, hopefully along with some of the steps I’ll take to turn them into reality. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your tips on how to focus and how you plan to get those ideas out of your head and into the world.