The high cost of cheap ideas

Are you wasting your time on cheap ideas? If so, you may be seriously limiting your success.

Why? Because they’re actually really expensive!

Ideas are cheap and plentiful. It’s fairly easy for you to brainstorm a short list of them in 10 to 15 minutes. One of them catches your fancy, and you jump right into implementing it.

But according to David Hieatt, co-founder of The DO lectures, that’s a big mistake.

Why?

Because low-value ideas actually have a high opportunity cost. In other words, you must a large number of hours implementing them compared to their potential return on investment.

In other words, you’re actually wasting your time by focusing on these low-value ideas. By taking up a significant part of your available bandwidth, they’re actually preventing you from being more successful..

It’s a common mistake that’s easy to overlook, as most opportunity costs are.

What’s the antidote to cheap ideas?

Here are two more fruitful approaches to finding truly valuable ideas that are worth your time:

Deep dive brainstorming

• Invest more time in clearly defining the challenge