I get ideas all the time. I get them when I’m sleeping, when I’m showering, while I’m driving, watching TV, reading, etc. Sometimes they really are great ideas and sometimes, what I think is a great idea, just doesn’t pan out. When I try to flesh it out it become arduous and nothing that I do seems to help. If I put it aside for a while and come back to it later, that often helps, but sometimes I just need to let that particular idea go. There’s nothing left to do but throw it away.
Throw it Away?
Yes, throw it away. It goes against everything you’ve been told, right? I know, but there is such a thing as beating a dead horse and on occasion, I need to face the thought that this idea just wasn’t for me.
Elizabeth Gilbert has a beautiful theory about this and I highly recommend you read it.
For whatever reason, an idea didn’t pan out. Maybe you lost interest, maybe it just wasn’t what you thought it would be, maybe you just waited too long. Whatever the reason, it’s important that you acknowledge that this has gone as far as it’s going to and release it.
A Recent Example
Part of my business is that I create digital planning stuff, planners, inserts, stickers, stuff like that. I had an idea to create a line of notepad widgets. I created lots of color schemes, different themes, I really devoted a lot of time to it. As with all of my creations, I used them myself, picking a different set each week and changing the colors of my highlighters (Good Notes) to match.
From early on, I knew there was something “off”. I wasn’t thrilled with the way they looked, I didn’t enjoy using them, but I kept trying, kept creating more of them, and really stockpiled a huge collection of them. Something was wrong, however… I never put them in the shop, I never offered them in the freebie section. What was wrong? I put them aside for a while and focussed on other things. Occasionally, I’d come back and look at them, but I was never quite happy with them.
After a while, I looked at them with fresh eyes. I opened the folder on my desktop and really looked at these notepads. And you know what? They were ugly. They were not my style, or aesthetic and I realized that they were never going to be “shop ready”. I highlighted them all and dragged them to the trash. To be absolutely certain, I didn’t empty the trash immediately. The next morning, I actually felt relieved that I no longer had to think about them, about what to try next and after a few days, I emptied the trash bin.
For whatever reason, that particular idea was not for me. If this happens to you, give yourself permission to just throw it away.