Sometimes I let problems rattle around in my head for too long. I need to start taking my own advice and put these thoughts down on paper or talk to someone about them. Sometimes doing something as simple as saying a problem out loud can help me work through it.
I recently had dilemma rolling around in my head for about a week. It was nothing major, just a nagging little thing about how to put together an email for a promotional campaign. I looked around online for a while but because I don’t find the topic super interesting, I tended to drift down into a rabbit hole of the web. After a while I would find myself no closer to solving my problem than I was when I first logged on.
Now if I chose to take my own advice, I would have expressed this problem to someone-a friend, a co-worker, a family member. Another option would have been to write it out and see if that helped. The reason why we need to get things out of our heads either verbally or on paper is to help close the loop on the thought patterns around the issue. If we express what is bothering us it can help the brain put the thought patterns into context and help come up with a solution.
After about a week of letting this particular subject bounce around my cranium, I said something to my wife about it. We talked about the item for less than five minutes and didn’t really come up with a solution. It turns out that was the primer that started forming the fix.
I went to bed that night and when I woke up the next morning, a solution to my problem jumped right into my head. What I came up with was one of those things that was so simple that I felt like saying to myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?” By expressing my problem verbally my brain was able to start working on a solution in a different way. The best part was that my brain did all the work while I was sleeping.
So how did the promotional campaign turn out? I’m not sure yet because I haven’t put my solution to the test. It turns out there is a difference between coming up with a solution to a problem and implementing that solution. Maybe I need to sleep on that and see if my brain will do that part as well.
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