If you're an entrepreneur with a course idea, you probably have twelve course ideas. And a podcast concept. And a membership site plan. And a book outline. The challenge isn't generating ideas — it's choosing one and seeing it through. Here's what experienced course creators recommend for beating shiny object syndrome.
The Entrepreneur's Curse
Creative entrepreneurs are idea machines. Your brain is constantly generating new possibilities, and each one feels more exciting than the project you're currently grinding through. As one entrepreneur put it: "Brilliance can turn into burnout, and creative energy can drift into distraction."
The pattern is predictable: start a project with excitement → hit the hard middle → notice a new shiny idea → convince yourself the new idea is "better" → abandon the current project → repeat. The result: a graveyard of half-finished courses and zero launches.
The "Not Now" Reframe
Business strategist Michelle Warner recommends reframing "no" as "not now." You're not killing your other ideas — you're sequencing them. Successful entrepreneurs choose one viable project at a time, see it to maturity, then move to the next one.
Create a "Someday/Maybe" list (a concept from David Allen's Getting Things Done). Every time a new idea strikes, write it down immediately — then close the notebook and return to your current project. Review the list monthly. Good ideas will still be good later. Most will lose their urgency once the initial excitement fades.
The One-Goal Rule
Entrepreneur Noah Kagan learned this lesson at Facebook and later shared it with Ramit Sethi: have one goal. Period. Not three priorities. Not a top-five list. One goal that gets your focused attention until it's done.
Neil Patel echoes this with a simple daily question: "What's the one thing you need to do right now?" You can have unlimited "someday" goals, but today, focus on just one.
The Goals Bracket
If you can't choose between competing ideas, try Todd Herman's NCAA-bracket approach: write all your ideas along the edges of a bracket. Compare them in pairs, choosing the stronger option each round until a winner emerges. The process forces you to make direct comparisons rather than evaluating each idea in isolation (where they all seem equally promising).
Keep the top 4–5 runners-up documented. They're your "next project" candidates once you finish the winner.
Choose by Speed, Not Ambition
Entrepreneur Amanda Genther recommends choosing the project you can execute fastest: "Create something that helps just one person." Not the most ambitious idea. Not the most lucrative. The one you can finish and ship quickly. A completed small course teaches you more than an incomplete ambitious one.
If you've been spinning between ideas for months, use the course outline tool to sketch out your top two candidates. Whichever one produces a clearer outline in 15 minutes is probably the one to start with.
When to Quit (Intentionally)
Focus doesn't mean stubbornly persisting with something that isn't working. As Caleb Wojcik suggests, sometimes the right move is to quit — intentionally and strategically. The difference between "shiny object syndrome" and "smart pivoting" is whether you're running toward something new or running away from something hard.
If you've done the work — talked to potential students, run a momentum process, and gotten real feedback — and the project still isn't gaining traction, that's useful data. A strategic pivot is different from abandoning something because it got difficult.
Your Next Step
Create your Someday/Maybe list right now. Write down every course idea, business idea, and project that's been competing for your attention. Then circle the one you're going to focus on for the next 90 days. Put the list in a drawer. You can revisit it in three months — after you've shipped something.
Not sure which idea to pick? Read about getting unstuck at the idea stage.