It’s easy to get stuck inside our heads analyzing, deliberating, scheming and doubting. 

An idea comes to us and we think about it for a bit. Then we analyze it. We probably get excited about it. Then comes the doubt. So we look at some alternatives. After a while, it’s hard to remember what the original idea even was.

Welcome to the entrepreneurial echo chamber.

The place where our thoughts bounce around to a point where they become unrecognizable.

I’ve spent a lot of time inside the echo chamber and have also spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to avoid it.

These are the 3 steps that help me avoid the entrepreneurial echo chamber:

1. Capture it - Get an idea out of your head as quickly as possible. Write down enough of the idea to be able to pick the thread up later. Good ideas tend to get better with time. Capturing it outside of your head gives an idea time to ripen. I’ve found the Captio phone app to be the easiest way to capture ideas quickly.
2. Talk it out - Explaining a new idea to someone else forces clarity. Now the idea is bouncing back and forth between two minds instead of rattling around in your head. This is why working with a coach, mentor or mastermind group can be helpful.
3. Break it down - Ideas eventually require implementation. The overwhelm of implementation can sometimes be enough for us to back away from a good idea. Breaking it down into incremental steps makes it seem more manageable and less daunting. 

There’s no shortage of ideas but there is a lack of capacity to deal with them. Capturing the idea early and giving it space outside of my head increases the odds of the idea coming to life and frees my mind from the echo chamber.