It’s entirely possible to believe that your ideas come from the muse, and your job is to simply amplify them. And that successful people are lucky because the muse keeps giving them useful and powerful ideas.
I’m not sure that’s what successful people do. All of us get an endless supply of ideas, notions and inklings. Successful people, often without realizing it, ignore the ones that are less likely to ‘work’, and instead focus on the projects that are more likely to advance the mission.
It’s possible to get better at this pre-filtering. By doing it out loud. By writing out the factors that you’re seeking, by explaining to someone else how your part of the world works.
Instinct is great. It’s even better when you work on it.
You can find more on this in The Practice, my new bestselling book.
I’m blogging about it weekly on Medium. And talking about it on some extraordinary podcasts around the world.
And we just started the eighth season of my podcast, Akimbo.