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I’m a big fan of the ‘business idea of the day’ mentality. I’ll have a great idea over breakfast, and by lunch time I’ll have registered a domain, built a website and charged ahead with setting up the necessary business systems. Unfortunately, I don’t give my ideas time to stew. And with the number of business failures and non-starters I’ve had, it shows.

So to prevent wasting time on the incidentals, I’ve started incubating my ideas before acting on them. When the business idea of the day strikes, I write down an outline of the concept in a spiral notebook, making sure to add all those little details that seem important at the time. Just doing this often helps me see the flaws in my plan.

If I can’t see any immediate reason not to proceed, I keep the idea alive, and give it a fair amount of thought over the next couple of weeks. But I make sure I do nothing more than add the ideas to my notes. If the idea still has merit at the end of my incubation period (usually 2-4 weeks) I pursue it. If I’m not sure, I let it sit for a while longer.

Incubation can save humiliation.

Thinking about it, the same process would work quite well with blog posts, website content, email marketing and press releases. It’s a lot easier to make changes to something you haven’t published yet. A little bit of patience could save you from making a fool of yourself in front of millions of readers.

This article is a good example. I started writing it about 2 weeks ago, and had to quit half way through. I saved it as a draft and forgot about it until this morning. Just by leaving it alone, I’ve come up with more relevant points to help make the article better.

Doesn’t idea incubation equate to procrastination?

If there was an award for procrastination, I’d get it, but I don’t think incubation is the same as procrastination. It’s simply a tool to help you sort through the millions of ideas floating around your brain. As long as you act on the idea once you’ve ironed out the kinks you’re not procrastinating, you’re planning.

A warning (although you shouldn’t need one)

There are 2 pitfalls to idea incubation which you need to tackle one idea at a time:

1. Quick to market ideas - if your product’s success is dependent on an event next week, incubating the idea for a month is just stupid.
2. Other people don’t necessarily need incubation - there are a lot of people out there who act immediately. Sometimes they’re good enough to succeed, sometimes they aren’t. But in the meantime, you may lose out if they get their idea to market before you do. It sucks, but that’s business.