Over the course of my adult life, two of my greatest past times has been talking to myself and brainstorming. There is a large park just round the corner from my flat, where I may regularly go for a wander around for around half an hour, mostly during spring and summer evenings. I have always found it much easier to think clearly and creatively when I have time to myself and space to wander around. In my flat I have far too much of the former, however space to move about is limited except for walking round in small circles.
So there have been many times when I have been unhappy with something in my life, or wanted to accomplish something, whereby I have spent a fair few hours of both wandering around the park and putting pen to paper inside the flat and drawing up a brainstorm.
In the first few years living alone, much of this was geared towards making friends and building a social life. Brainstorming applied both to short-term and long-term objectives. For instance, if I was likely to be somewhere where a girl I fancied was present, I would try and brainstorm conversation topics, and try and picture the various scenarios that would give me a window of opportunity to speak to her.
Around 2010, when I started going to meet-up style events, I would look at what other sorts of people were going and try and brainstorm conversation topics. Without going to any detail here, I would even try and brainstorm potentially fun and flirtatious (in my eyes) ways I could interact with a woman.
Then around 2015, in my efforts to succeed in online marketing, I would brainstorm online marketing ideas and strategies, aims and goals. I remember one or two occasions in August 2015 really scrambling around trying to make sense of things and them in logical order while wandering round the park on a few quiet cool mornings (I was unemployed briefly at that time).
I will admit now that much of my wandering around brainstorming work was not the most effective goal-setting techniques, and much of it especially in the early days, was me clutching at straws.
However, after many years of all this thinking, I came to a realisation - that when I decide I want to go for a wander down the park, it's not so much to create a serious action plan as it is simply for the need to talk to myself in a more open space, and stretch my legs. I certainly wouldn't say my brainstorming efforts have been futile, however, I have more recently come to realise that I can easily thrive on the excitement of an idea, but really struggle with getting down to the nitty-gritty and putting those early steps into action.
Planning Actions ideas is easy, taking the real action is hard work, especially getting started. I think it is good that I have recognised this.
In more recent times, it has typically the weekends, when I have a fair bit of spare time, and sometime feel my life is in a rut, that I feel inspired to take some sort of action. My mind can be all over the place while I'm working but often after work I get tired and never get round to much.
I guess one of the most helpful things is actually recognising the above - that I often enjoy thinking about the idea more than the actual accomplishment. Knowing that this is how your brain works, actually helps you to say to yourself "right time to take the first steps...no point wandering round the park brainstorming if you never get on with it."
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