83 | From Overwhelm to Crystal Clear: The 3-Step Process I Use When I'm Stuck

You know that moment when you sit down to work and suddenly you have 17 ideas. It's not what was on your to-do list, and suddenly you're kind of shifting through priorities, and what you said you were gonna do is not what you really want to do today. Yeah, I know. I've been there.

I have like a bachelor's, a master's, a PhD on task switching and new ideas and all things, and of course, getting stuck because of that. So today we're fixing that. Don't worry, I got you. Hello, my love.

Welcome to Brand Confidence for Creatives. Are you feeling stuck in a cycle of overthinking, trying to build your brand? I'm Eugenia, but you can call me E. I'm a marketing and brand coach, and I spent years stuck in the cycle of researching, hesitating, and hiding until I got clear on my voice and my message.

In this podcast, I'll guide you through the strategies you need to get clear on what you want to say, build a personal brand, and create consistent magnetic marketing. If you ever thought, I know I have something to say, I just don't know how to say it, you are in the right place. So grab your coffee and let's dive in. If you're listening to this and you are already thinking that your problem isn't really that you have too many ideas, that your problem is that you kinda know the general idea, but you just don't know how to communicate that, you don't know what your brand is saying right now, then I have something for you that's going to be a game changer.

I do really believe in that based on the feedback I've gotten from brand reset. It's a one-on-one session, it's gonna be 60 minutes, and we're gonna get your message and your positioning very clear in one sitting. This is not about copy, this is not about being witty or clever. This is about you having some direction so that then you can move and speak and create and find opportunities and make offers from a place that makes perfect sense for your audience, for your customers.

And at the end of the day, that's gonna make it so much easier for them to say yes to you, to listening to you, to working with you, to be part of your community. So book your session at eugeniawoo.com forward slash brand. That is e-u-g-e-n-i-a-w-o-o.

com forward slash B-R-A-N-D. Of course, the link is gonna be in the show notes, and it's a one-on-one session. Get on stock, get clearing your brand, and continue building your business. I have ADHD.

Confirm ADHD, and I think it can be a gift, and I like to call it a very playful brain. And not everyone has ADHD like confirmed, but I know so many creatives who have some ADHD-like tendencies. I think our phones have made it even worse. Like we are so bombarded by information that we are just context switching the whole time and getting so much information and ideas.

And me personally, the moment an idea hits me, I don't bot it away. I play with the idea, I entertain the idea. And to be honest, I love that about myself because I get paid to just have ideas and pull patterns together. That's literally my job.

But there's a little downfall to that, is that one idea becomes three ideas because I start looking at all the possibilities. And each of those sub-ideas has its own sub-subideas. And suddenly I'm not working, I'm spinning, and I've spent two hours of work just like going through the idea instead of actually moving the needle forward in what I have to do. And I'm at this point in my life, I'm too old to spend time asking why and why or this way.

Let me change myself. I believe in working with your strengths to optimize your life instead of just like trying to change yourself. So instead of removing ADHD or playful tendencies, I've gotten really good at going back into focus. I'm still gonna have the ideas, I'm still going to explore the ideas, but I'm giving those ideas structures and I've made it super easy for myself to go back to be in focus.

And today I'm showing you exactly how I do it, and I love that it's very simple. It just requires a Google Doc and a calendar reminder. But first, we need to set the foundation before I give you the system, because this is the mindset shift that's going to make your three steps of this process actually work for you. First, and this is going to be probably a harsh analogy, but you need to stop treating your ideas like children you're abandoning.

Like we are so attached to ideas, but ideas are not children, ideas are not pets, ideas are paths. Ooh, I like that. They're not pets, they're paths. Imagine you are walking through a park and the path forks, right?

You take the left path, and the right path doesn't disappear. The right path is still there. This is not a Super Mario game where if we take one bridge, the other one is going to be burned down by the dragon. Like that path is still going to be there tomorrow.

Like you can come back to it. And ideas are exactly the same way. An idea is not a story yet. An idea is not a character yet.

It is potential, right? It is a path that opened up in your brain. And the fact that you choose not to walk it right now doesn't mean that it's gone forever. Just like if you turn left, the path on the right doesn't go away.

So this reframe is super helpful because everything I'm about to share with you only works if you actually believe you can come back to an idea. If you don't believe that, if you have this little FOMO mentality when it comes to idea or even a little bit of lack mentality of this is going to go away, no system is going to be helpful. And this system is designed to build trust between you and your brain. And that's super important if you have whether you have ADHD or ADHD like tendencies.

You need to be able to trust yourself, trust your brain, the more you grow. In every stage, you need to continuously build trust because you know that you might have some tendencies, but you feel like you got it, you have the systems to get back on track. So, first step in the system is capture. No surprise to anyone.

You need one physical home for your ideas, not two, not three, just one. You don't need a note and a notebook and a Google Doc and a notion and this and this and that and the third and an email you send yourself. Like, no, you need one place for your ideas. And this is this is the structure.

And that place needs to be physical. It cannot be your mind. It has to be like a like an actual physical place. Even if it's in the digital world, it needs to be like an actual asset.

For me, it's a Google Doc 100%. I've tried so many things. I actually was very good at capturing my ideas in Notion for a while, but I kept losing things. And you know, I would write my ideas, and then whenever it was time to go back to it, or I knew I had an idea about it three months, four months ago, and I just didn't know where it was because Notion has so many pages.

So I was like, is this in this Notion? Is this in my notes app? It is this a voice memo? So I never knew.

So I stopped trusting the system, and we know that this system relies on trust between you and your brain. So my Google Doc, I trust, and it is categorized by areas where I get ideas the most. Like you cannot, you know, you don't need to create these categories if they are not relevant to you. But to me, for example, business ideas and then content ideas, offers, vision, events, impact.

Maybe you want to have impact as its own category. Maybe impact and community events is very important to you. So that's its own category. What is very important about the categories in this capture step is to pick categories based on how your brain already works, not based on some productivity system someone told you.

Because I've read the books with some category suggestions and they include things like meal planning ideas. I'm not a meal planning person, like I'm not a person that's like, oh, I want to try this recipe. And if I do, I just save them to a folder in my Instagram. And if I ever feel that I want to try a recipe, it's going to be there.

But I don't have a system to go back and revisit my meal plans. Or I don't really do a bunch of brainstorming ideas for the podcast randomly. I'm actually very disciplined in the way I create my ideas for the podcast. It's actually a little bit different, probably.

And I have a whole series of two episodes on how to launch and grow your podcast. And I do talk, I believe from episode one, I talk about how I come up with my episode titles or my content. And I just don't do the whole brainstorming random ideas. But if you do, though, if that really works for you, then you might want to have a section just for your podcast, for example.

So trust or choose the categories that work for you. But this step has one rule: one idea, it hits, it goes there. Same place every time. Remember, and I'm gonna say this a lot in this episode, it is about building trust between you and your brain.

Then step two is about parking. And here's where we really are going to exercise the trust. And this is uh kind of a step that's a little bit uncomfortable because all the like the two other steps. So if we see this little bridge, right?

Step one is the beginning of the bridge, step three is the end of the bridge, and then step two is that connection of the bridge. And on step two, we're just holding the uncomfortable and holding the trust. And also, this is a step that most people skip. Most people cross step one, it's time to cross the bridge, and they're like, oh no, this is like I'm not doing anything here, I don't trust it, I'm gonna go back.

I'm gonna write a memo for myself, my voice note, I never come back to it. Like, we go back to it because we don't have the discipline. So, in this step, you have to let go of your idea for a specific period of time. That's why I call it park.

And this is what happens in your brain when you can't let go of an idea. It's called the Sangarnick effect, and maybe I'm mispronouncing it. It's spelled Z-E-I-G-A-R-N-I-K, if you want to look it up. But basically, it is a psychological tendency that we all have to remember interrupted or uncompleted tasks better than we remember completed tasks.

Because your brain creates some cognitive tension around things that are incomplete. So it keeps bringing them up, like, hey, hey, this is not complete. And it's that doesn't mean that those things are urgent, right? That means that your brain doesn't trust that they're safe.

So if that's why you need to build this muscle, your brain needs to know that you're going to go back to those uncompleted items. The moment you capture an idea somewhere, and then you actually return to it, that tension is going to be released. And your brain is going to stop nagging you. Because your brain is gonna know, okay, there's a place for this, and I'm going to come back to it.

Again, this step needs training because you your brain needs to be able to trust you to know, okay, I'm gonna come back to this. I I can chill, I have an appointment. But if your brain is like, I don't trust this girl, she says that we're gonna come back to it, but I don't think we will. And if you don't have this system, maybe your brain is not going to be able to fully trust you, and it's okay.

It's okay, it's part of it's part of it. We can deal with the tension. When we park an idea, we're just telling our brain, hey, I see you, I've got it, you can let go now. So once this is captured, you can let go.

Don't keep it open in a mental tab. Like really trust the document, trust the process. And then step number three, now is the end of the bridge. We revisit.

And this is so important, we need to set a recurring calendar appointment. It can be this can be monthly, quarterly. I like quarterly, I think monthly is a little bit too much. But maybe at first you need monthly just because your rhythm uh requires a little bit more speed.

Just open the dock and read through it. But reading through it is not enough. Like that's that's kind of half of the step three, right? Most productivity advice tells you, oh, go back to your ideas, just read it.

But we need to have a filter. Like, what do I do once I read through those ideas so I don't jump back into the spiral? So when you're looking at an idea, run it through these three questions. Number one, is this connected to something I'm currently working on?

If yes, perfect. It has a natural home right now. Number two, does this move a goal? I'm actively pursuing forward.

Maybe I'm not working on it right now, but it is part of a bigger picture goal. So if this is a content idea, then I am working on content. Step number one, perfect. Put it in your content bank.

If it's number two, moving a goal I'm actually actively pursuing, maybe it is a bigger goal, right? Maybe the goal is growing my audience. And I got the idea of an incredible angle for podcast pitching myself, like pitching myself to go on podcast rather. And I know that the second half of the year, I'm gonna wanna work on my visibility.

Then you can add this angle to your visibility project for the next semester. And number three, and I think this is so important, especially for our brains that are very interest-based and playful, is does this still excite me when I read it? Like obviously, it made an impact in my mind. Do I read it?

And is it still exciting? And maybe excitement can look different ways. Maybe, maybe you have an idea to go find a new CPA that can help you file your taxes quarterly and make more money in the end. Of course, the idea of finding a new CPA is not fun, but the idea of having more money at the end of the year definitely sounds fun.

So either the idea or the result are these things that are exciting to me. If the answer to 12 of three is no, of course. Leave the thing in the dock, it's not ready. That's information.

Not like no big deal. If the answer to two out of three is yes, it gets a home. So content, move it to a content calendar. It is a project like a new lead magnet, an offer, and it's aligned to a goal, move it to the project section of your project management tool.

Sometimes you're gonna run an idea through all of the questions and you're going to feel nothing. Like no excitement, it's not relevant. Don't delete it. You're gonna come back to it again next month or next quarter.

And maybe the answer to excitement is yes, but it's not aligned with an active task or an active process, and it's not aligned to a goal. Maybe that's just information that you need to revisit those goals. If you have a bunch of ideas for a project that's not aligned with any of your goals, maybe you need, yeah, you need to change your goals. Like I have an idea for an impact project I want to work on, but I don't have that as a goal right now.

But I have so many ideas that to me is looking very clear that for Q2, Q3, I need to make that project a goal for sure. So I recommend that you keep the ideas that are still parked, you keep them there for three cycles. If after three cycles of revisions, the answer to those questions, the three questions are still no, meaning they don't even excite you, then it's time to let them go. And don't delete them because a friend, she's an editor, so she has a section whenever she edits a document called editing graveyard.

And I love the concept, and I created the ideas graveyard. So we don't just delete ideas, we bury them a little morbid, I know, but you put them in a place so you can keep a record that those ideas, those ideas exist, and maybe once a year you want to read through your graveyard, but you are not just revisiting them in a disciplined way, and you kind of close the loop in your brain, and you know that it was your choice. Like it's not that I cannot work on this, it's that I really don't want to.

And and that's so beautiful because also this helps us feeling like we are giving up on something, we are choosing to let go of something. I think that's super, super powerful. So, to recap, the three steps to get on stock are capture, so giving all your ideas a physical space. For me, Google Doc, highly recommended.

Number two, park. So let go of that idea until your next review cycle, and that is the next step. The the word here on step two is trust. And then number three, revisit.

So schedule times to open your document and go through it. Here in revisit, you're gonna ask yourself those three questions to identify if this is something you need to move to your tasks, to your projects, or it needs to stay in your parking ideas until the next cycle. And here's what this system actually gives you. It's just not a really cute Google Doc.

It is trust, trust between you and your brain, and that is so powerful. Because overwhelm really doesn't come from having too many ideas. Overwhelm, like that feeling of almost anxiousness, comes from having so many ideas and not trusting ourselves or the systems we have in place or our teams or whatever, our current situation to handle those ideas. So once you have a system that works that you can retrust and that can be relied upon, those ideas stop feeling like a threat.

You stop feeling like there's a problem with you because you have too many ideas. Your brain was created to think, to come up with ideas, among many things. But because one of them is being creative. That's why the world has evolved so much, because of our God-given brains and our God-given ideas.

They're not bad. We just need to improve our relationship with ideas. So if you have too many ideas, just know you're not too much, you're not scattered, I don't want to hear those words anymore. You just need a system that's going to keep up with you.

And I believe this system will. Try it out. Let me know how it goes. You know I'm on Instagram reading my messages.

I really hope this blesses you and helps you move forward with all your ideas. I'm rooting for you as always. Until next time, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you loved it, don't keep it to yourself.

Send it to a friend who's also trying to grow their brand without losing themselves in the process. And if you want to make my day, drop a quick review on Apple Podcasts. Seriously, it means the world to me. And I know that this show is helping you show up with confidence and clarity.

See you back here soon for the next episode. Un beso.