Welcome to Keeping Up With The Ideas!

Hello!

Welcome to my new blog/experiment/idea journal, Keeping Up with the Ideas!

Before I get into why I started this website, I want to explain a little bit of how I got here, because the journey is always more fun than the destination.

At the start of 2015, I had an idea to start a blog about my journey of getting out of debt. 

I wrote several draft posts on Evernote, with the idea that I would launch my new site in June, but I didn't have the finances to create the website that I envisioned, so instead of putting my fabulous new website on a credit card, I decided to hold off on the launch. In the meantime though, I continued to write. And the more I wrote about money and debt and credit cards, the more I wanted to know about saving money. It had been years since I'd read any kind of money books, so I wanted to find out what people were saying now about how to become debt-free.

Since I'm obsessed with podcasts (and spend lots of time driving in the car to and from work), I searched my iTunes for personal finance podcasts, and that's when I came across So Money with Farnoosh Torabi. I listened to several episodes before I finally heard Episode 193 with James Altucher. James' views on life (specifically about saving money in your 401(k), buying a house and going to college) completely turned my world upside down. He questioned everything that I thought to be true about work and money, and to my surprise, I didn't run away from his ideas. I actually wanted to know more.

I bought his most recent book, The Rich Employee, which turned out to be a huge turning point for me.  

At the time, I was on the verge of quitting my job. After 11 years of working for "the man," I was ready to move on and do something different...like start my own business. What kind of business? I had no idea. I just knew that I no longer wanted to work for anyone else; I wanted to work for myself doing something I enjoyed. But The Rich Employee changed all of that. 

Every turn of the page felt like the bitterness I had toward my job was slowly fading away. It was like having a car that you absolutely hate and then driving it through a car wash after not washing it for years. When your car emerges all clean and shiny, you're in love with it again, and it's not because there was anything wrong with your car in your first place. It's just that you needed to see it in a different -- clearer -- perspective.

After finishing the book, I gained that type of different, lighter, happier perspective about my job, and without really even trying, I became excited about going to work again.

I was also excited to read more of James' books, and that's when I came across another book, this one written by his lovely life, Claudia Azula Altucher, called Become an Idea Machine. 

I downloaded a free sample of the book and was instantly attracted to how simply writing down 10 ideas a day, 7 days a week, for 180 days could transform your life. I wasted no time and tried to do this myself. I got out my pen and paper and began to write down my 10 ideas a day. But after about three days, my brain was tired from all the thinking, and my life wasn't changing. I didn't feel transformed, so I gave up. Plus, it was exhausting trying to keep up with my messy little notepad of ideas.

But the idea of writing down 10 ideas a day kept calling to me, and I wanted to give it another try. This time though, I needed a better plan and a much better way to keep up with all of my ideas.

Then a wonderful and unexpected event happened.

I came across one of Gretchen Rubin's Happier podcasts where she was talking specifically about "Obligers" (a term that Gretchen came up with to describe people who are better able to form habits when they have external accountability). 

It was in that very moment that I realized that if I was going to really keep up with my ideas and actually write down ten ideas a day for an extended period of time, then I was going to have to find a way to get some external accountability. 

The very next day, I listened to an interview with Ev Williams, the founder of Blogger, and then BAM!, I knew exactly how I could keep up with my ideas and have external accountability: I would start a blog.

I didn't really have a plan to tell anyone about it, but just knowing that someone may happen to come across my site was all the external accountability that I needed.

Now I needed a name for my new blog.

To come up with a name, I made a list: "10 ideas for website names to share my 10 ideas a day."

Here is the exact list.

1. Ten ideas

2. Ten ideas a day

3. Ten big ideas

4. 180 days of idea

5. Ideas for days

6. Six months of idea

7. The daily idea

8. 10 ideas 180 day

9. There are no bad ideas

10. Keeping Up with the Ideas

With some quick research, I discovered that ideas #1, 2, 3 and 5 were already taken -- probably because they were the most obvious names for a website about ideas.

Ideas #4, 6 and 8 were available, but I didn't really like the idea of having numbers included in my website name.

Idea #7 could be purchased for the low price of $1,295.

Idea #9 was my top choice, but when I looked at how the website name would look with all of the words strung together -- www.therearenobadideas.blogspot.com -- it didn't seem that interesting to me.

The last idea, idea #10, was the most difficult one to think of, but it came as a result of me thinking about my favorite reality TV shows: The Real Housewives. American Idol. So You Think You Can Dance. Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

That last reality show name stuck, and I decided I could change it up to create a new website name: Keeping Up with the Ideas.

The more I looked at it, the more I liked it. Not only was it catchy, but it was also an exact summary of what I wanted this blog to be: a place for me to share and keep up with my 10 ideas a day, 7 days a week, for 180 days. 

Join me tomorrow as I begin Day 1 of sharing my 10 ideas a day.

I'll also be providing an update on my progress every 30 days, because like I said before, it's about the journey not the destination.