The most efficient way to find a solution to a problem is to act as if. Act as if your first idea is going to be the absolute solution. This becomes a rigorous stress test and you’ll find out your idea’s short-comings quickly. An example is the color-coded notebook system I came up with recently. I had a problem: too many damned ideas! I didn’t have a place for everything. And I was wasting way too much time sifting through a large notebook to review and store all the material. Now I have a simple solution. I color the bottom of my multiple one-subject notebooks: green = audio journal snippets, red = my word salad fiction project (to improve my writing skills), colorless = daily reminders, black = new vocal and language, 5-subject = brainstorming and misc, legal pad = snippets for my blog.
I went through 30-40 business names before I settled on Master Your Roles. With each I acted as if that was my name. I had business cards printed and everything. When I come up with an idea that I think is good, I post a picture of it on the dashboard of my car and look at it throughout my day. I’m testing it. The craft velociraptors in Jurassic Park did the same thing. They were always testing the security fence for weaknesses. Be like a velociraptor! I’m in the process of changing from Think Like a Musician to Master Your Roles. At a networking event, I handed my Think Like a Musician card to someone and he said, “Ohh… Think Like a Mexican - what’s that?” I just laughed and immediately decided to revise that scribbly font that wasn’t doing the job of clearly communicating my brand.
I always liked the expression “burn the ships.” Explorer Cortes instructed his soldiers to burn their ships once the arrived because he was fully committed to his mission and conquest. My point here is expose your idea with rigor to the real world. Of course, the second part is you need to be willing to give up on parts of your idea in pursuit of a better solution. If you take this approach, you will arrive at a place where you can’t make any improvements. Congratulations - you have arrived. Now apply it to another area of your life. Act as if helped me make break-throughs in three areas of my life in the last few weeks: organized my trunk, colored notebooks, and scrapbooking the news (for blogging material). Try it!
Act as if is a time management and personal productivity strategy for solving creative problems.