Annual Review of Idea Capture Overflow
An evaluation of the twelve-month period in which collecting ideas was treated as equivalent to using them.
Q1: January through March
The period opened with the installation of a new note-taking application, selected after a review process that generated more documentation than the application would ever contain. Forty-one ideas were captured. None were acted upon, though several were tagged for later review.
A workaround was introduced when the note-taking application began to feel inadequate. A second application was added to handle overflow. The overflow application quickly became the primary repository, and the original application became a queue for items not yet transferred.
Q2: April through June
Capture volume increased. A naming convention was developed to organize the captured ideas. The naming convention required its own documentation. That documentation was saved in both applications.
The preparation remained genuinely useful in small doses, which made it ideal camouflage for the decision that had not yet been made. The creative decision in question was whether any of the ideas were worth executing. This question was deferred to Q3.
Q3: July through September
Q3 was designated a consolidation period. The two applications were reviewed for redundancy. Seventeen items were transferred. Four items were archived. The consolidation generated a new category of item: ideas that were neither good enough to pursue nor bad enough to delete.
The workaround produced a second check designed to confirm the first one worked. This was judged satisfactory. The creative decision was deferred to Q4.
Q4: October through December
Ordinary action now had a parallel administrative system built around it. The system had not been planned. It had been accumulated.
By the end of the review period, the total number of captured ideas stood at two hundred and fourteen. The total number of executed ideas stood at three. The ratio was noted. It was added to a list of items to revisit in the following year's review.
Under the governing rule, idea capture overflow may continue indefinitely once everyone knows how to work around it. Everyone knows how to work around it.
Recommendation for the following period: Continue.