SNS95 Learning to Focus on Ideas
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Welcome to tonight's. Saturday night, special episode 95.
[00:00:06] Robert Farrington: [00:00:06] I'm Robert Farrington from the college investor.com. I encourage you to be inspired, to become a better steward through financial wisdom. By listening to this show, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.
[00:00:21]Scott Maderer: [00:00:21] and this is why this technique is about more than producing content. It is a great way to come up with content, but it's also a great way to just begin to pay attention to the world, to pay attention to other people, to pay attention to what is going on around you. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts.
[00:00:47] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll [00:01:00] learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:08]and tonight and Saturday night special, I talked to you about ideas. I share a technique. I use to get ideas for this very podcast. And I also share why this technique is good for more than just content production. I also talk about how you can begin to train yourself. To use this technique for yourself.
[00:01:30]One area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to [00:02:00] be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done.
[00:02:04] What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Cause the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
[00:02:21] But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that in productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. When people talk to me about the podcast.
[00:02:42] A lot of times when they just, that I've got over 800 episodes in that many of those episodes are solo episodes that I've put out with just little short tidbits. Of me talking about a particular topic or a particular idea. The immediate question that people [00:03:00] have is how have you come up with this many different things to talk about?
[00:03:05] How have you been able to do where most of the episodes I'm rapidly getting to a thousand. And I've really only, rebroadcasted a few weeks whenever I needed to take a week off and I've missed one week where I didn't produce any content. But other than that for a pretty consistent time, over three years, I've put out day after day, week after week, new little tidbits where I talk about an idea and what's more, they're somewhat tailored around the areas of time, talent, treasures, and then spirituality and people are like, how can you do that?
[00:03:41] How can you come up with idea after idea overall period of years, And the short answer is I've trained myself to pay attention to ideas. What's happened is I started and I used to think of myself as not a very creative person. I used [00:04:00] to think of myself as somebody who had a hard time getting new ideas.
[00:04:04] Oh, I was really good at taking somebody else's idea and putting it into action. I was really good at taking a process or procedure and improving it. But I wasn't so great at coming up with the ideas in the first place. And so when I began to think of myself that way, I began to think I wasn't really creative.
[00:04:24] I wasn't somebody that would be able to write a book or produce content regularly, or do something like a podcast or a video or a blog or whatever. And that kind of sheltered me and kept me from having to try. But then when I began to work as a coach and begin to do a little bit of my coaching business, I began to notice certain things that came up time and time again when I was talking to clients.
[00:04:51] And because of that, I began to develop some ideas around how I could talk about topics in those ideas. And I noticed what was [00:05:00] happening is I was hearing things or seeing things are coming across things. Over and over again, and those things were sticking in my head as I did vias. And so what I did is I began to capture those ideas.
[00:05:15] I began to take a notebook everywhere I went and whenever I would come up with one of those ideas, I would just jot it down, not a big detailed six page paragraph, but enough that it would remind me of what was the idea, what was the issue that I had seen? What did I want to talk about? Or what did I want to do?
[00:05:32] And then when I came up with the idea of doing the podcast, that notebook was the first place I went to get ideas for episodes. But what's funny is I still didn't think of myself as a creative person. And then what I did is I said, wait a minute, if I'm noticing these things and I'm seeing ideas and things that I want to talk about, then obviously I'm paying attention in some way.
[00:05:55] Let me actually make that a habit. And so I began to [00:06:00] challenge myself to come up with multiple ideas a day. I had challenged myself to sometimes come up with 10, 15, or even 20 ideas a day. And I moved on from just carrying a notebook and I'd actually just started a little file on my computer. That was also sinked up to my phone so that anywhere I went, because I had my phone with me everywhere, I went and I spent a lot of time on the computer.
[00:06:24] If an idea came across that I wanted to talk about or capture, I could just pull up in that file and type it in. And I began to first come up with five or 10 and then 15 and 20 and 25 ideas a day. And I would challenge myself. To not be able to end the day till I had captured whatever number of ideas I had challenged myself to do.
[00:06:47] And very quickly, what I found is it was easy to come across new ideas of things that I wanted to talk about. And what's interesting is yeah, not all of the ideas were great. Sometimes I would come [00:07:00] back to one that I had captured last week and I would look at it and I'd be like, ah, this is a stupid idea for something to talk about in the podcast.
[00:07:07] And I throw it out. But oftentimes there were little things in there that would turn into not just one episode, but four or five or even 10 episodes. Capturing these ideas began to train my mind, to pay attention to what was going on around me. And this is why this technique is about more than producing content.
[00:07:31] It is a great way to come up with content, but it's also a great way to just begin to pay attention to the world, to pay attention to other people, to pay attention to what is going on around you. And you can begin to do this yourself too. If you think of yourself as not a creative person, is you think of yourself as someone who struggles to get ideas that I challenge you to spend the next 24 hours and simply carry a notebook with you or [00:08:00] carry a little notes thing on your phone.
[00:08:03] And come up with at least 20 ideas that you could talk to somebody else about something where you've got an opinion, something where you've got an idea, something where you've got something that you could share a value around that topic. Because the truth is if you begin to do that, you'll notice all of a sudden that yes, you actually do come across things and you actually are creative.
[00:08:28] What's happening is we haven't taught ourselves to pay attention to those ideas. We all have them. They cross our mind day in and day out. But what we don't do is actually capture them and act on them. It's not the ideas. That's usually the blockage, even though that's what we think it is. The blockage is around action and around actually capturing them.
[00:08:52] That's usually the struggle, but we think the struggle is we have no ideas for ourselves. So I [00:09:00] would encourage you if you think of yourself as one of these people that struggles around creativity to take this activity and run with it for a week or a month and see how many ideas you actually notice around you.
[00:09:13] And then let's take the next step. And take some of those ideas and put them into action so that you can change the world. Thanks for listening.
[00:09:23]Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.
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