Ruling Out, Ruling In

A fundamental distinction is between having too many ideas or too few.

• Having too many ideas creates the problem of prioritization. Evaluate your current activities and cull those that don’t make the cut.
• Too few ideas can leave you feeling stuck. You want things to be better, but nothing pops out as worth pursuing. As a result, you put half-hearted efforts into tasks you’re not sure will work.

The “right” quantity of ideas isn’t a given. Instead, it’s a mental threshold for what’s worth pursuing. Dialing it up forces you to focus, and dialing it down lets you explore more options.