I think we might be looking for ideas at the wrong time.

If you’re wondering where to find content ideas for your business, the honest answer is that most of them have already passed through your week. A client call. That thought on the drive home you swore you’d remember. We just tend to go looking for them later, at the exact moment our brain has decided to be empty.

Something weird happens to how we pay attention to our own lives once content becomes part of the business.

It’s like we’re constantly in this algorithmic brain mode. Everything is either a post or it’s nothing. And that’s a lot of pressure to put on one little thought.

Where do content ideas actually come from?

Mostly from your normal working week. Not from a list of “100 content ideas for coaches” you saved in 2022.

You’re on a client call and they say something that makes you go ooooooh.

Or you notice the same problem for the third time that week. Someone asks you a question you’ve never been asked before. You have a random thought while driving home that you REALLY don’t want to forget.

That’s where the good stuff is. The things your audience is actually confused about, in their actual words. The bit of your field that annoys you. The pattern you only see because you do this every day. The question nobody in your industry seems to answer properly.

And none of that shows up when you’re staring at a blank document.

The problem is what we do with it next.

Why do I go blank when I sit down to plan content?

Because the second the thought shows up, we try to turn it into content.

Okay but what’s the hook? Is it a carousel? A reel? Can I teach something with it? Does it fit my content pillars? Would Helen share it? Is it even relevant anymore?

I don’t bloody know. The thought happened 14 seconds ago and driving at 110 km/h doesn’t help 😂

So the idea gets interrogated before it’s even fully formed, it doesn’t pass the test, and it disappears. And then a few days later you sit down to plan your content, open a lovely clean document, and ask your brain to suddenly become interesting at 10:37am because you allocated 45 minutes to content planning.

That’s when we decide we “don’t have any ideas”.

You had loads. You just didn’t keep any of them, because none of them arrived looking like a finished post.

How do I capture content ideas before I forget them?

I think having somewhere to CAPTURE things matters more than having somewhere to store perfectly formed content ideas.

Those are two different jobs. Capturing is fast and messy and happens in the middle of your day. Storing a polished idea is something you do later, with a coffee, when you’ve got a bit of brain left.

When we mix them up, the capture never happens. Because who has the energy to write a hook in the school pickup line?

Look, I have an embarrassing amount of notes that make very little sense to anyone but me.

A sentence someone said. Something that annoyed me. A question. A weird pattern I keep noticing. Sometimes it’s literally four words that made perfect sense to Tuesday Tinna and require me to become Enola Holmes on Friday.

They’re not posts. And some will NEVER be posts.

That’s fine. The bar for a note is “this made me stop for a second”. That’s it. It doesn’t need to fit a pillar and it definitely doesn’t need a hook yet.

Use whatever you’ll actually open. The notes app on your phone, a voice note once you’ve parked the car, a scrappy page at the back of your diary. One place, though. If your ideas live across four apps and a sticky note on the fridge, you’ll never find the bloody things again.

How do I turn a random note into a content idea for my business?

When I sit down to plan, I’m not starting from nothing. I actually have somewhere to go back to.

THEN I can figure out why the heck I saved it.

Maybe there’s a misconception in there that my audience keeps repeating. Maybe it’s a pattern I’ve now seen with five different people. Maybe it’s something I strongly disagree with. Or a story that explains something better than a reel of me ranking 5 random books.

Say your note just says “but I don’t have time to post”. On its own, that’s nothing. But if you wrote it down three times this month after three different conversations, now you’ve got something. Maybe that’s a post about what “no time” actually means for your clients. Or maybe it reminds you of an offer you haven’t talked about in months.

Or maybe there is absolutely f*ck all there and I delete it.

Also fine. Not a waste at all. Deleting a note that went nowhere took me four seconds. Sitting in front of a blank page for 45 minutes waiting for genius takes a lot longer.

Do I need more content ideas or a better way to keep them?

I think that’s the bit we miss when we say we “need more content ideas”.

You probably have a ridiculous amount of useful things passing through your brain every week. You’re just expecting them to do a job before you’ve even fully crystallised the idea.

And the thing that makes a note useful later isn’t really the idea itself. It’s the context. Four words with no context is how you end up playing detective on a Friday.

So don’t just write the idea. Write when it showed up, what made you stop, and the way it changed even the smallest connection in your brain. “Client said X, and I realised I’ve been explaining Y backwards” is a hundred times more useful than “X?” on its own.

How to start capturing content ideas this week

You don’t need a new system for this. You need one place and a slightly lower bar.

• Pick ONE place your ideas go. The one you already open every day is usually the right answer.
• Write the note the moment it happens, even if it’s four words and a question mark.
• Add a line of context: when it showed up and what made you stop.
• Don’t ask “is this a post?” while you’re capturing. That question is for later.
• Before your next planning session, read your notes before you open a blank document.
• Delete anything that goes nowhere, without guilt.

Give it a few weeks and planning gets a lot less painful, because you’re starting from a pile of half-thoughts instead of a blank page.

Do that and thank me later.

Want help turning your ideas into a plan?

Capturing ideas is the first half. The second half is knowing which ones to use and how they fit into a plan that actually leads somewhere in your business.

That’s a big part of what we do inside The Content Engine. It’s a 90-day community where we build your content plan week by week, with a live call every week and support in the community on weekdays. So your notes app stops being a graveyard and starts feeding something.

If that sounds like what’s missing, have a look at The Content Engine.