Imagine the following: You’re driving a car with a well-above-average acceleration speed, the sun is behind you making everything ahead shine glamorously, the cars around you are perfectly placed apart (tight enough to make your heart skip a beat, but enough space to make it in between without a scratch), and then your favorite song hits the station you are listening to. Before you know it, you’ve cranked up the volume louder than you thought was possible and adrenaline has taken over your steering wheel and gas pedal leaving you only minimal control over the breaks. You’re zooming past the traffic like Michael Schumacher on the German Autobahn and you can’t help but feel so pumped; the euphoria is just mind blowing.

When you’re on the highway it’s just a matter of driving as fast as possible for as long as possible until the song you love is over. But when you experience something like that in your personal/work place, what do you do about it? You feel like you own the world and if you don’t act quickly you will lose all creative and functional value attached to this feeling. Here are my suggestions (and experience has taught me to follow them):

1. Call up a good friend that shares similar interests. Warn him/her not to speak until you are done, and then have a little discussion. The real time feedback mechanism allows you to extend your original thoughts and ideas. Moreover, with having a genuinely interested listener, chances are, the feedback will be beneficial. Though, don’t overwhelm your friend and make sure to keep everything in proper context, because he/she doesn’t know everything dancing around in your head.

2. Do some reading and research. The material you come across will help put a better focus on your thoughts and turn them into something more concrete. The research will offer insight regarding expectations, trends, current technologies, and if you’re lucky enough, you’ll find yourself a few real life examples to chew on. Google, blogs, and entrepreneurial websites are your friends.

3. Write down your thoughts as if you were in a large brainstorming session. The process is very healthy and allows you to see your ideas on paper (keep a focus on important key points to avoid getting sidetracked). At the very least this lets you organize your brain activity and incite you to take action.

4. Spend a good amount of time on steps two and three. Once you’re in the zone you should take it for what it’s worth. This is important and building on your momentum will be crucial. You might have a really busy day ahead of you, but trust me, if you put this step off, chances are you’ll never come around to it. The decision to spend more time on this is a risk you take like any smart individual does when he/she lands on an opportunity. A word of caution though, keep track of time and make sure you’re not just fooling and wasting your brain cells.

5. Finally set a day to capitalize on your idea. Book it into your calendar! It would be pretty useless if after all the above, you simply put aside your idea and paper(s). Do yourself a favor, pick a day (weekends are days as well), wake up early, have a good breakfast and get to it. This day should be your plan of action.

Personal Experience:
I get that jolt of inspiration and motivation once or twice a month (on a good month), but up until recently I’ve always fallen into the trap of getting excited and doing very little productive work with it. I always used the excuse of being too busy, or “I’ll do it later tonight” or even thinking that when the weekend comes around, it’ll hit me again. However the few times that I’ve gotten off my ass and took productive action have been very rewarding. Not so long ago, I sold an image hosting website to a California-based social media company for six figures. And so, upon realizing the value of productively channeling these bursts of inspiration and energy, I’ve become more committed to my “idea-to-life” process and have been nicely rewarded (though sometimes somethings just don’t work out).

So remember:
1. Talk, 2. Read, 3. Brainstorm, 4. Time, 5. Schedule.

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The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer - Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s