When you’re running a consultancy, you’re rarely short of ideas.

There are always things you’re working on. For clients, for your own business. All at different stages of completion.

And you know that even the ideas that don’t go anywhere will likely contribute something later.

I’ve come to think of this as Idea Sprawl.

Working with it

You can try to fight it and stay completely focused at all times. Or you can let ideas flow naturally and find a way to manage them.

When left unmanaged, ideas don’t disappear; they accumulate. And the accumulation has a cost.

The building load

I think of it like a busy household.

You tidy up once a week and keep on top of the main things each day. As the week progresses, things get a bit messier. Paperwork builds up, bits of day-to-day clutter appear, and by the end of the week, everything needs resetting.

The difference is whether things have somewhere to go.

When they do, tidying is straightforward. You work through the piles and put things back in their place.

When they don’t, the effort increases.

Not because there’s more to do, but because every item now carries a decision. What should I do with this? Where does it belong?

That’s where the load builds.

The weight of ideas

The same thing happens with ideas.

Without a place for them, they don’t sit quietly in the background. They stay open, pulling for attention at the wrong moments.

You see a new opportunity and hesitate because you’re already holding five others. You return to something you started and can’t remember what you were thinking at the time.

You feel busy, but lack clarity.

A home for your ideas

I’ve found that having a clear value ecosystem changes this. Ideas can be assessed in context. They either have a natural place, or they don’t.

If they do, they’re stored where they can develop.

If they don’t, they can be let go without much friction.

That simple act of placing things reduces the load.

The idea for this newsletter is a good example. The phrase “Idea Sprawl” came to mind, so I captured it as a topic. Left there, it had time to connect with other ideas, settle a little, and become something more useful.

Not every idea needs to be acted on immediately. But without somewhere for them to go, they rarely leave you alone either.

Ideas are the starting point of everything

In that sense, they’re some of the most valuable assets you have. But unmanaged, they compete with each other, and when everything competes, very little moves.

It’s worth thinking about how you currently manage them.

Not only how you capture them, but also what happens afterwards.

Where do they go? How do they evolve? What gets revisited, and what gets left behind?

If you’re already using the idea of a value ecosystem, it can be a useful structure for this. If not, it’s worth considering what your equivalent might be.

If you’ve found a way to manage your ideas that works well, I’d be interested to hear about it.