Creative works are a lot like pears. If you try to force it out the door, it won't make an impact. Wait too long, and the core idea will simply rot in your mind. The trick is to develop a process for ripening those ideas.

"I feel like I could talk to you all night." The woman I'd been enjoying the evening with leaned in and said with a devilish smile. That's when I knew that I was onto something big. The next day thoughts danced inside my head like ancestral cavemen who had just discovered fire. Over the next month, the same scenario played out again and again and again. It seemed like I'd slipped into a modern version of Groundhog Day. Would you believe I hadn't really said anything? In fact, I had barely told this person anything about myself. And it wasn't because I was trying to be evasive. I was simply practicing a newfound skill that made talking about myself almost irrelevant.

If I could do it all over again, I would have practiced my negotiation training and calmly replied in my best FM DJ voice, “You’re from Chicago?” I hate getting sidetracked. Whenever I learn something new, I try to practice that new skill. But someone or something always seems to appear out of thin air to distract me like a jelly donut brigade parachuting into a fat camp. Then, I spend days or even weeks ruminating before unlocking the hidden lesson.