Just One Idea

I’m working on a new project right now, and it’s complex. There are lots of tasks. Last week I decided to write a to-do list. The list got longer and longer, and the more I thought, the longer it got- and you know what? Seeing everything in black and white actually felt demotivating. There’s just so much that it’s hard to pick what to do first. Instead of making it easier to get started, the long list made it harder.

This is not just a me-thing. This is a normal human thing. You may have heard about the famous jam study. When people can choose from 24 kinds of jam, few of them buy any. With only 6 types of jam, sales are much higher. (As long as there is blueberry, I’m happy! Or applebutter, I love applebutter…with nice homemade bread…whoops! I got a little off track there.)

When there are too many choices, people easily default to doing nothing. Rather than choosing either/or, they choose no.

For those of us who host conferences and events, this matters because you know how attendees leave with notebooks packed with ideas? This seems like a good thing. But in reality, few of the ideas in those notes will ever spark action. Why? Because there are just too many.

We want participants to get a great ROI, and one way to realize that ROI is to use an idea. But few will use an idea if their idea list is long.

So how do we help attendees take action on the ideas they want to try that they learned at our event? We can make time for prioritizing.

At the end of every session, we can ask, “What is the one idea that is the quickest to try?” At the end of the morning, afternoon, or day, we can ask, “What is the easiest idea to try?” Or we can ask, “What idea on your list doesn’t take hardly any resources at all?” Or maybe we ask, “What is one idea that you can do by yourself?, or “Which idea doesn’t require any permission?” At the end of a conference, encourage participants to review their top ideas and pick the one idea (just one) they want to try first.

When people leave with one idea they’ve committed to try, they are more likely to do it. If that one idea works, they may try the next idea on the list. Soon they are using the ideas from your event, and they’ll realize how much ROI they got from being there. They will be more likely to come back, and maybe they’ll tell a friend.