I’ve come up with a great idea for a new book – and one that I am sooooo excited about writing. However, I’ve decided to put my excitement and ideas on hold for a week. You may be wondering why?

In my mind my new book idea is strategically aligned to my personal and business brand. It will strengthen my proposition to the market place. (It will even be relevant for HR professionals, and not solely focused on professional service firms.) However, I’m still putting it in my back-burner file. This is my place where I temporarily park (or even permanently park) all my good ideas. By capturing my ideas and parking them it allows me to do several things:

1)    focus on what I have to get done NOW, rather than distracting me with shiny things which may or may not be useful

2)    Empty my brain, so I can get on with what I really need to be thinking about

3)    Enables me to reflect on an idea rather than getting carried away with early new idea enthusiasm

4)    Allow me to pick up my idea at a later date

Will I revisit my good idea? Yes. Part of my reason for back-burnering it is I want to reflect on it. Before I switch resource to this new idea, I need to be certain that this is the right decision for me personally, my business and the stakeholders who will be influenced by this decision. Hence my let’s wait a week before I take any affirmative action towards implementing my latest idea for a book.

Very often our stakeholders are ‘ideas people’, i.e. they can’t help coming up with good ideas. I used to have a boss like this. It seemed like every 2nd week, he would have a new priority which took priority over all the over previous priorities. I could never get anything done… If only I could have filed all his good ideas, in a back-burner file.

Creative and great ideas often strike at an inopportune moment. With a back-burner file, you can capture the idea, and then pick it back up when you are ready for it.

Do you have a back burner file?