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5 ways to think big, any day of the week
Ground Yourself In Reality
Brainstorming lets you speculate without restriction, but your ideas must be checked against reality. Be realistic about what options are actionable, and then take the next steps.
Encourage teammates to submit ideas into a single project. Then, have everyone like their favorites and sort them based on that.
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Key Ideas
Ground Yourself In Reality
Brainstorming lets you speculate without restriction, but your ideas must be checked against reality. Be realistic about what options are actionable, and then take the next steps.
Encourage teammates to submit ideas into a single project. Then, have everyone like their favorites and sort them based on that.
Identify First Steps
Big tasks tend to lead to procrastination if we don’t immediately choose the first steps. Study past similar tasks, the necessity for it and how to achieve it.
Having a time and a place when you know you’ll need to present your ideas to an audience is a good way to force you to structure your approach.
Choose Specific Goals
Breaking your big picture into specific doable goals will make it much more actionable. Especially if they come with a finite timeline.
Big questions are worth asking but they should be framed in a way that doesn’t feel burdensome or insurmountable.
Buddy Up
Find other people to think with and bounce ideas back and forth.
If you’re a manager, buddy with someone who reports to you: teammates who don’t often get the chance to strategize will be energized by the opportunity. This way, your teammates will feel ownership over the conclusions you come to together, and you’ll gain focus and clarity.
Allocate Time To Think
If you just do what’s next on your to-do list, you won’t find time to think about the big picture.
Block off time on your calendar based on when you’re most creative (morning, afternoon, evening).
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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A Specific Daily To-Do List
- You should only put things on a to-do list that you have the time and resources to achieve.
- Big goals and projects should be broken down into actionable tasks. ...
An Outsource List
- Look at everything on your to-do list and ask yourself, ‘Am I the only person who can do this?’
- Anything that can be given to someone else should be put on an outsource list.
- While outsourcing takes the extra time upfront to train someone else on the task, it saves you time later, which can be used to focus on the things you do have to do.
A Long-Term Goals List
Even if you think it’s too big of a dream but it’s something you want, write it down anyway.
When you write something down, studies say you’ll be 33% more likely to do it because it sets an intention and puts a goal into motion.
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Key Ideas
"Breaking tasks down helps us to see large tasks as more approachable and doable, and reduces our propensity to pr..."
Melissa Gratias
Your Brain Is Limited
So by breaking a larger project down into smaller to-dos, it will be easier for you to identify what step you should take next.
These smaller steps should be written down on a list.
You Work Better With Specific Goals
The main reasons why specific goals are so powerful:
- They force us to make a choice to pursue them and exclude anything that’s irrelevant. This increases our focus.
- They incite effort.
- They inspire us to be more persistent, as we have a clear idea of what success looks like.
- They immediately get our wheels turning on the strategies necessary to attain them.
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Take A Break
When you’re working on a big project, taking a real break is important for mental productivity.
Stop the project you’re working on, take some real time away, and come back to it with a ...
Mind Map It
A common reason for feeling stuck on a project is because there’s too much information to process, causing you to lose clarity on your end goal.
Mind mapping is a visual note-taking style to help you get your ideas out on paper. Essentially, you’re making a map of how all of your ideas relate to one another. Start with one central idea, like the overall project goal or just a piece of it. From there, think about the major tasks, goals, or ideas behind the projects.
Try A Change Of Scenery
Getting out of the space you associate with your project can help bring an unexpected shift in your perspective.
Try to get away from the setting you’ve been working in. Do you work from home? Try a new location like a coffee shop, library, or coworking space. Work in an office? Go offsite with your team.
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