When Cheryl and I moved from Illinois to NY, we decided to donate, recycle, or throw away anything that we couldn’t fit in our two tiny Toyota Tercels. It is amazing how much stuff can accumulate in the two years we were getting master’s degrees. We got rid of a lot, but we still managed to fit a lot of stuff into our two tiny cars.
Now, many years later, we both have larger cars, but I doubt that even my collection of ideas to Poogi programs for children with autism would fit inside both of our cars. I have years and years of scribblings, notebooks, and random pieces of paper with ideas. That doesn’t include the ridiculous amount I have in digital files like Dropbox, emails, and flash drives.
The thing about my collection of ideas is that most of them are terrible and will never be effective. That’s OK. I’m a strong believer that the only way to get great ideas is to have a lot of ideas. Then, only implement the best ones.
I’d do one thing differently now. Once I determine that my idea doesn’t work, I now document the results, and then destroy both the paperwork and electronic files as soon as possible.
Clutter is a big enemy of the POOGI.