What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed With Ideas
How creatives can move through an overload of ideas and find the ones worth pursuing
What’s it like to be crushed under a pile of half-finished content?
You’ve almost certainly heard of writer’s block (which may or may not be a real thing). But have you ever heard of writer’s overload?
I heard the term for the first time today in an article from Medium contributor Lisa Olsen. In addition to a shoutout, she shared that she has been deluged by ideas for potential articles.
She finds that the volume of ideas she has for content are preventing her from actually creating content. There are so many things she wants to pursue that she often feels overwhelmed, walks away, and ends up creating nothing at all.
Massive volumes of content? Developing multiple things at once? That sounds like my bread and butter.
In the field of data science, we have a corollary to writer’s overload: analysis paralysis. That’s the buzzword for when you’ve done so much number crunching, predictive modelling, plan-making, etc. that you find yourself unable to actually act.
I’m not an expert on writer’s overload. But I can share a few things that I’ve found helpful on Medium— and in creating content in general— when you’re finding yourself overwhelmed with ideas and unable to move forward.
Figure Out What You’re Bad At
This sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s ultimately extremely helpful. Stop for a moment, and think about your field. Now, think about all the aspects that you’re bad at.
For example, I’m a pro photographer. But I’m a very bad studio photographer.
I can’t be bothered to set up a tripod, get all the fiddly bits with the lights and reflectors configured properly, find props, set up backdrops, and all the other elements that make a great studio photograph.
Likewise, I’m a very bad lifestyle photographer. Posing scenes, directing models, performing heavy edits, and creating an aspirational look and feel — none of these are things that I have a particular affinity for or any noticeable skill in.
Why is it helpful to figure out what you’re bad at? Because it allows you to quickly eliminate a whole set of ideas that aren’t worth spending your time on.
I have tons of ideas for great studio photographs. Moody shots of different iconic products from the 1980s with directed lighting and dark backgrounds, for example. Having worked in the stock media industry for nearly a decade, I know those would sell.
Likewise, I have lots of great ideas for lifestyle shots. Models dressed as software engineers walking around certain parts of SoMA in San Francisco, with perfect lighting, makeup, and the works — that would be a goldmine!
The thing is, I know I’m not the photographer to take those pictures. I would spend a ton of time and money putting together a shoot, and my photos would turn out only half as good as those taken by a true studio or lifestyle photographer.
Even though I have the ideas — and they’re good — I don’t actually have to execute on them. I’m really not the best person for the job.
Once you realize that, it’s very liberating. It allows you to focus your time and energy on the things you do excel at, and eliminate a bunch of ideas that would otherwise occupy your time and get you limited results.
There’s a simple joy, too in seeing someone else execute on an idea that you had, but knew you weren’t ideally suited to implement.
I remember thinking about this with Evernote, a brilliant note-taking platform. For years, I had thought how useful it would be to have a software platform where you could load up notes, PDFs, images, audio, etc and have it all be instantly searchable.
In many ways, it was a burden — I always felt like that would be so useful that I ought to go ahead and build it.
And I knew that I just could. With hundreds of hours of work, an investment in UI, and tons of dev help, I could bring that idea to fruition — even if coding consumer-facing software platforms is absolutely not my forte.
It wouldn’t be much fun, would cost a fortune, and the end result would probably be a giant kludge. But it was so good an idea that it felt like it needed to exist, and had the nagging feeling that I should eventually build it, even though I didn’t especially want to.
When I found Evernote, I was overjoyed. Here was exactly the system I had imagined and wanted to have existed, but I hadn’t needed to spend years of my life painfully creating it.
Someone else who was way better at consumer software than me had come along and created a streamlined, easy to use, platform which did exactly what I had imagined — and looked great to boot. I could happily pay my $6 per month to use it, and go back to taking photos. Years of my life were saved.
That’s not to say that you should never try something new, or that you should avoid whole parts of your field because you’re bad at them. I still take some studio shots, and I occasionally produce lifestyle content. It can be helpful to challenge yourself, especially if you’re doing it in an experimental way.
It’s just that when I have an idea that falls into one of those categories, I know I don’t have to immediately jump on it.
I can focus on the things I’m best at, and not feel burdened by implementing ideas that don’t play to my strengths and interests. And that takes a whole lot of ideas — and their weight — off my plate.
If you find yourself overwhelmed by ideas, ask yourself which ones are good, but not good for you. Let those go — and appreciate the simple joy in seeing someone better suited implement them down the line.
Or take it one step further, seek that person out yourself, and share the idea with them.
Keep an Ideas Pipeline
One practical tip I have for Medium specifically is to always keep an ideas pipeline.
Every time I come up with an idea for a new article, I create a draft and write the article’s headline. Usually, I then walk away for days, weeks or months. I have about 100 published articles on Medium right now, and 47 drafts.
I’ve heard of contributors who might have 500+ articles in draft form at a time. That’s fine — it’s a way of building out a pipeline for ideas that you can work on in the future.
I also love post-it notes. If I have an idea and am away from the computer, I’ll jot it down on a post-it note, sometimes along with a first sentence or rough outline. I’ll then either refer back to the post-it in the future or load it up into Medium as a draft.
Once I have draft headlines loaded up, I might come back to them and write a first sentence, a first paragraph, etc. Sometimes I’ll sit down and write a whole article — from writing a headline through to the full draft and final edit. But in many cases, I’ll write a bit about a topic and then move on and keep working on it later.
Around this, I like Tim Denning’s ideas about not treating writing as some high minded, lofty, creative activity, but as a practice. Do a little bit each day, whether your output is good or not.
It’s less like being struck by some otherworldly muse, and more like cleaning your house. Do the bathrooms today, the counters tomorrow, and floors on Thursday, and over time the place gets clean.
Some articles take me months to write. I just did a big one about stock photography marketplaces, that I hacked away at — and had sitting in my drafts — since October. Now it’s online, curated, and already receiving hundreds of views. Other times, I create a Medium post in a few minutes — on which more below.
I find that demystifying the creative process — and focusing on adding to content little bits at a time, just like you would clean your house, exercise, etc. — helps to get out of the mindset of “I’m going to sit down and create this whole piece of content right now, in a perfect form.”
Hack away a bit over time, continue to produce content even if your output isn’t always perfect, and over time your efforts will build on themselves.
And don’t be afraid to have a ton of content in your pipeline. You might never get around to a specific article, but at least you’ve captured your possible future content ideas and can work on them when you feel like it.
Focus on Doing an 80% Job
There are plenty of stories that I finish writing and go “Well, that’s crap.”
Usually, it’s a story that I’ve written very quickly, almost as a stream of consciousness.
The thing is, when I come back and review the story the next day, I often find that it’s not crap at all. Some of my most successful (and certainly most efficient) pieces on Medium were written very quickly — and I initially thought they were no good at all.
My piece about The Anatomy of a $650+ Blog Post, for example, was written in about 25 minutes. It was my attempt to dump out onto the page all my thoughts about why another piece had taken off and done well. When I finished it, I thought “Well, I’m glad I got those ideas down for my own use, but this won’t go anywhere.”
Of course, it did. The quickly-written post has now made $300+ itself. Over time, it might do just as well as the more detailed post it was written to analyze.
What gives? As much as we like to think that spending more time on content will make it better, that’s often not the case. Sometimes pouring out your thoughts in an unstructured way (and perhaps lending a little more structure the next day with an edit) actually results in simpler, better-articulated ideas than spending a ton of time getting everything right.
Some pieces, of course, can’t be written like this. Sometimes you really need to dig into research and fact-checking. My piece about fake people (which inspired the Anatomy post), was carefully researched and required me to refer back to interviews, notes on presentations, etc. It also required me to actually use the software I was talking about. I definitely couldn’t have written that in half an hour.
But for the pieces that are more about an idea, your own experiences with a topic, or your own opinions, it’s often possible to put words down very quickly. And sometimes these pieces are actually better than the ones you spend hours writing.
So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, try focusing on doing an 80% job — especially if you’re creating content that’s more about your own thoughts and less about facts and research. Get your ideas down, come back the next day, and see if they’re coherent enough to edit and publish.
In many cases, you’ll be surprised that they are — and for your readers, they might feel more raw and relatable than if you spent hours agonizing over every word choice and heading in the piece.
This also frees up more time for the pieces that genuinely do require detailed research. Put in the time to get these right — but if you’re covering your own experience, try to dive in and share your thoughts quickly.
Work Your Content
Those are some ways I’ve found to capitalize on ideas and produce lots of content. I’ve focused on Medium articles here, but the same dynamic applies to all kinds of different content, too.
As I’ve shared in other articles, I use the same techniques for YouTube videos. Through research and random ideation, I build up a list of YouTube videos to shoot. I then sit down and work through them, producing as many as 9 videos in 25 minutes of shooting.
As with Medium articles, I focus on videos that mostly require opinions and my own experiences (“Is this product a good buy?”). When I have a longer time to sit down and shoot, I’ll do more detailed videos that require a deep dive into facts and research.
The end result is the ability to take 30+ ideas and convert them into monetized videos very quickly. It’s how I’ve managed to build up my YouTube channel to the point of monetization with very minimal effort and time committed.
Free Yourself From Idea Overload
If you work in a creative profession and find yourself deluged by ideas, try these strategies.
First, think about what you’re bad at. If one of your ideas is a good idea but doesn’t fit with your strengths, let it go, and enjoy the future moment where the right person comes along and builds it. Or for bonus points, hire that person yourself!
As you come up with ideas, keep them in a pipeline. Don’t be afraid of this to become really huge. Then, hack away at them a bit at a time, slowly pushing ideas through the pipeline until they become fully realized articles, videos, or whatever kind of content you create.
Finally, try doing an 80% job. Don’t skimp where facts and research count, but instead try to find content that you can reasonably produce very quickly. Get your ideas down and come back the next day. You might be surprised that the piece you thought sucked is actually helpful (or can become great with a few simple edits).
This last one applies to articles and videos, but also more technical products like code. How often have you hacked something together, only to find that your code worked better in production than the code you spent hours painstakingly developing the “right way"?
With these strategies, overload doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It can become a positive state of having an efficient process, and a bounty of great ideas to pursue.