PP 011: Chronic Idea Disorder

What is Chronic Idea Disorder?

Let me take a quick minute and explain to you what Chronic Idea Disorder is to me. And I do want to ask – if you have another idea for what I could call Chronic Idea Disorder, please visit theKimSutton.com/podcast and submit a comment because I’m really looking for another name that doesn’t make it sound so bad. Because I feel like it truly is a blessing.

Anyway, Chronic Idea Disorder is a condition I have where I am struck with random ideas all the time and they just don’t go away. And I love it.

I’ll be walking down the hall. I’ll be doing dishes. I’ll be driving the car, grocery shopping, taking a shower, you get the point. Ideas flood my brain constantly. At some points they are a blessing, at some points they’re a curse, it just depends on how much I have on my plate already.

It also depends on whether or not I have a way to record the ideas when I get them. It seems like every time I forget my notebook at home, I have an idea. And it’s at those very moments that my cell phone is dead. So for those of you who also have Chronic Idea Disorder, I want to discuss how you can be productive when you have it.

The tools you need to manage Chronic Idea disorder

My first tip for dealing with Chronic Idea Disorder is to outsource. I am a person who likes to do everything myself. Or I don’t necessarily like to do everything myself, but when I get an idea at 3 o’clock in the morning and I want to get up and work on it, you know that’s not really the best use of my time.

I’ve built a team now of people who helped me manage my tasks so that I can focus on client activities as well as the activities that I really need to be working on for my business that only I can do -such as recording this podcast. I can’t outsource this! But it sure means a lot to me to know that I have the editing team available to me now -and I have to think Matt Mawhinney and his awesome team at PodAssist for that – that I know that when I finish recording this podcast I can send it over to them. They’ll edit it. They’ll upload it. And I don’t have to worry any more about it.

The other members of my team who I rely on, GREATLY, are my great friend Jennifer who’s my online business manager (Or Chronic Idea Disorder Manager). I will shoot her a Skype her with any of my ideas that have come in, and she’ll put them in Evernote, she’ll file them away for me for later. And I know that I can pick them up at a future point, when I have the bandwidth to handle that idea.

She’ll also take care of researching the background than I need, for any of those ideas, such as the software or the apps or the systems that I need to implement those ideas, and make them come into reality. She’ll do that research for me and compile it all in one place, so that when that time opens up, and when I can focus on that idea, that I have all the material ready to get started, and to plow forward as efficiently as possible. So, thank you, Jennifer.

With my artistic background, I often find myself getting stuck into a ritual of trying to do graphic design work on my own. And I have to admit, it was only when just about to launch this podcast, that I realized I needed to stop doing that, and I needed to get help.

I finally hired a graphic designer who I absolutely love. His name is Kenneth Morgan. You’ll be able to find him in the show notes on theKimSutton.com/podcast or I believe this is going to be Episode 11 so that will be theKimSutton.com/PP011. Kenneth Morgan has been awesome. He created all the podcast artwork. He produced the social media images, and he’s working on a number of other projects for me right now, which I hope to share with you in the future. But if you’re looking for graphic design help, I have to highly recommend him.

I also have WordPress and app development teams who are working for me behind the scenes. If you’re like me, you have perhaps found yourself trying to figure out that little glitch that’s happening in your WordPress website and you’ll spend hours, and hours, and hours on it. I know personally I spent 10 hours one Sunday trying to fix something that was going wrong, and I never got it figured out.

That was another one of those “aha” moments. I knew I needed to get help. Just because I had a random idea in the middle of the night does not mean I need to implement it into my own site. Just because I have aha moment that I want to try something on my WordPress site doesn’t mean that I need to be the one doing it.

So I have a WordPress team and I also have another team that’s developing the Positive Productivity app for me right now. And hopefully in the next month or so I will be having great news to share with you on that as well.

So again, my first tip for you is outsourcing.

My second tip if you have Chronic Idea Disorder is notebooks, pens and bath crayons. Purchase plenty of them all.

I have a notebook that sits on my desk and a notebook I carry in my purse. I have plenty of pens – that’s mostly because I have kids who also love to take my pens – And in the bathroom, I also have bath crayons, because as I previously mentioned I am struck with ideas in the shower.

I’m not going to get out of the shower to record my ideas. So what I do is pick up a bath crayon, write it on the wall, snap a picture, put it in Evernote, and voila! I have it for future.

I also just recently developed the Positive Productivity Tracking Sheets. One in particular that I love is the Blog Article Ideas because I come up with blog article ideas all the time. I love to write my articles, but most of the time I do not have the time to sit down and write out an article of quality that I really want to share with my audience.

The Positive Productivity sheets are laminated cardstock sheets – laminated on both sides because, hey I’ve got kids. Things get spilled. I sell my own coffee on a regular basis, so these laminated sheets allow me to use dry erase markers, keep them on my desk, and record all of my ideas for future use.

If you’re interested in seeing the various Positive Productivity Tracking Sheets you can visit theKimSutton.com/shop and you’ll see the whole line of products that I have, and am constantly adding to.

So again, tip number two is purchase plenty of notebooks, pens and bath crayons and carry them with you all the time. No, you don’t need to carry the bath crayons, but you get my point.

And my third, and final, tip or app to recommend to you is Evernote. I use Evernote on my PC. I also have it on my smartphone and it comes in so handy. As I mentioned just a moment ago, I come up with blog article ideas all the time, and Evernote has saved the day when I really just want to get a blog article idea written as soon as possible. I’ll be driving down the highway, open up Evernote, and use the talk-to-text function of my phone to transcribe the article directly into a new note, and then I can copy and paste it into WordPress when I get home or later when I have more time to edit and do everything that I want to.

Evernote does come in a free version. I personally use the paid version because then I can think across multiple devices. But you can find that Evernote.com if you’re not already familiar.

If you, too, have Chronic Idea Disorder, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear how you’re making it work for you and your business, and you can submit your comments and solutions to me at www.TheKimSutton.com/Podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I will catch you your next one.