How Do You Know If Your Idea Is Worth Pursuing?

One way is to notice how much time you spend thinking about it.

Creative people usually have no shortage of ideas of things they’d like to do. The greater challenge is: how do you know which ideas are worth pursuing, and which should be abandoned or just put on hold?

Here’s one way: consider the amount of time you spend thinking about the idea, even as you go on to other parts of your life.

I don’t just mean when you have an idea and you think about it a lot the same day. I mean when you have an idea, and you think about it for a while before putting it aside… and then it comes back to you the next day. Then a week goes by, and you realize you’ve thought about it almost every day.

The more days (weeks, months, etc.) that go by with the same idea coming to mind, the more you know that you should do something about it.

I thought about this recently in an interview when I was asked, “What keeps you awake at night?” I said something like “Well, most of the time it’s because I’m sad or anxious.” Which is true! But there’s also another, brighter experience, when I’m excited about an idea, and that idea is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing at night.

Last month I published the 3,000th episode of Side Hustle School, a daily podcast I started on January 1, 2017 and have recorded every day since. It’s been a lot of work, a lot of fun, and I’ve learned so much.

For me, this idea very much fit the scenario I described above: I came up with the concept one summer, and it kept nagging at me for a long time. I began to explore the world of podcasting and design a working model. I still had room to back out, but at a certain point I could feel that I was committing to it. And it felt good!

There are other ways to know which ideas to pursue and which to abandon, including relying entirely on intuition or performing a more systematic analysis. But this way—noticing how often you think about it as the days and weeks go by—can help you avoid the pattern of starting many ideas only to walk away from them too early.

If nothing else, it will help you do more of what you’re excited about.

Do you have an idea that sounds like this? If you’re not sure, start paying close attention—one will find you before too long. 🙂