Your Best Idea is under your nose

Hey—It’s Mohammad.

It's 6:30 pm on a Tuesday. My phone pinged. It was my "Someday Maybe" List on Google Keep. 6 ideas and projects I've been meaning to start "sometime." The same ideas for three years straight.

I leaned back in my chair with a sigh.

Read Time: 6 minutes

These aren't just neglected tasks—they're ghosts.

Digital hauntings of what could have been. Six apparitions hovering over their own headstones.

We call them ghosts not because they're dead, but because we look right through them. They're not hidden or buried—they're perched in plain sight while we look everywhere else.

Psychologists call it inattentional blindness.

Our brains filter out the constant to focus on the changing. It's why you don't notice the hum of your refrigerator until it suddenly stops.

Our oldest, most persistent ideas become that background hum. Always there, never noticed.

Your Biggest Breakthrough is in Your Notes App

The most valuable ideas you'll ever have are in your notes app, buried in notebooks, digital files, or that "Someday Maybe" list you created years ago.

But these aren't failures—they're seeds planted before their season. Your brain recognized something important, but perhaps the timing wasn't right:

• The idea needed to incubate longer (and has now fully formed)

• You lacked the skills to execute then (but have them now)

• You weren't confident enough (but have since grown)

• The market wasn't ready (but is hungry for it today)

These ideas survived time. Unlike other ideas, they stuck around for a reason.

You aren’t alone.

Pixar's groundbreaking "Toy Story" started as a failure.

It began as a shelved concept with a tyrannical Woody character that tested horribly. Instead of abandoning it, they extracted its essence—toys with conflicting worldviews coming to terms with their purpose—and transformed it into a film that launched a $7.4 billion studio empire.

The difference between abandoned genius and market-changing innovation isn't the quality of the idea.

It's the resurrection. The second draft.

The willingness to recognize that your brain was onto something important, even if you weren't ready to execute it then.

Finding the golden nuggets.

Open your organization's project management system right now.

Find that shelved initiative—the one that generated initial excitement but lost momentum. The concept that still occasionally surfaces in conversations despite being "dead."

1. Day 1: Recognition (60 minutes)

   • Set a timer for 30 minutes and review all your notes, lists, and abandoned project documents

   • Identify 3 ideas that still spark something in you despite their dormancy

   • Spend 30 minutes journaling about why each idea originally excited you and why it stalled

2. Day 2: Pattern Analysis (45 minutes)

   • Select ONE idea to resurrect

   • Write a single sentence capturing its essence

   • Identify the persistent problem it solves or opportunity it addresses

   • List 3 concrete ways this idea aligns with your current strengths, resources, or market position

3. Day 3: Minimum Viable Manifestation (2 hours)

   • Create ONE tangible artifact that makes the idea real

   • This could be: a single prototype, a sales page mockup, an outline, or a recorded conversation about the concept

   • The goal isn't perfection—it's crossing the threshold from concept to reality

The key isn't doing everything—it's doing ONE thing that moves your idea from the abstract into reality.

Fiction writers make abstract concepts tangible through specific scenes. Similarly, your goal is to create a tangible artifact within 72 hours. Not the full implementation—just enough to cross the threshold from concept to reality.

• Have one customer conversation.

• Build one prototype.

• Create one mockup.

Your team's project management tools, shared drives, and meeting notes aren't graveyards for dead ideas. They're waiting rooms for dormant innovations.

Forgotten ideas into 5 Leads in 30 days.

Just last month, I worked with a client who'd been sitting on ideas she'd had decades ago. We excavated these dormant concepts and explored how they could apply to her current business challenges.

Within just four weeks of resurrecting and refining one particular idea for her newsletter & LinkedIn, she had generated 5 qualified leads—people drawn to the unique methodology we'd resurrected from her creative past.

The idea wasn't new—it had been waiting patiently for her to become the person who could execute it.

The market doesn't need more innovation programs. It needs more resurrections of the genius already present in your organization, guided by the most powerful tools for transformation.

Your most profitable innovation isn't hiding in the future—it's buried in your past, waiting for resurrection.

What ghost will you bring back to life this week?

See you next Saturday— Mohammad

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