How I Decide What to Make (and What to Let Go Of)

Someone asks me this most months. Usually it comes with a list. They have twelve ideas, no way to rank them, and a growing suspicion that making all twelve is not the answer.

It isn't. But the useful part is not a system. It's a set of questions I've learned to ask before anything goes into production.

This post isn't the full breakdown of my process. It's the thinking underneath it. If you're a year or two in, making steadily, and starting to feel like the ideas are piling up faster than you can decide on them, this is for you.

1. Ideas get to sit before they get made

Not every idea needs a decision the week it arrives.

I let them wait. Some get clearer. Some go quiet and I never think about them again. Both of those are answers.

Urgency blurs judgement. Waiting sharpens it. Most of what I've regretted making was decided quickly.

2. A good idea is not the same as a good fit

Shaker keychains. I liked the idea, I could have made a nice one, and I walked around three market events and saw them on table after table.

So I didn't make them.

Nothing was wrong with the product. The problem was that it already existed, repeatedly, in the exact place I would have been selling it. Interesting, enjoyable and creatively satisfying are not enough on their own. Some ideas are meant to be explored. Fewer are meant to be sold.

Letting something stay a sketch is a legitimate outcome.

3. Patterns, not one-off signals

One person asking for something is information. It is not a reason to make it.

My rough rule is three. If three different people ask for the same thing, across a few months, without prompting from me, that's worth looking at. One request is one data point. It tells you that one person wanted something, which is worth knowing and isn't the same as a reason to make it.

Patterns suggest resonance. Single moments suggest someone had a nice time at your table.

4. Not every suggestion is meant to be followed

People will tell you what you should make. It usually comes from a good place, and the ideas are often solid.

But a suggestion tells you what that person wants. It doesn't tell you what your work needs. Those overlap sometimes. Not always.

Three questions I ask:

• Does this fit what I'm building?
• Does it support where I'm going, not just where I am?
• Does it sit naturally beside the rest of my work?

Listening matters. Implementing everything you hear does not.

5. Excitement is not a plan

Excitement gets an idea started. It doesn't tell you what the idea costs.

Before I commit, I look at capacity, and at what maintaining this thing will feel like in eight months when the novelty has worn off. Some products are a joy to make once and a chore to reorder, restock and photograph forever.

Sustainable creativity asks slower questions than impulsive creativity. It's less fun in the moment. It's the reason the work is still here.

6. Letting go is part of making

The first sticker packs I ever launched were on my first website. I loved painting them. They barely sold.

I retired them, and that was genuinely useful. The lack of sales told me something I couldn't have learned any other way, and it pointed me at what my business should do next. The packs did their job. Their job just wasn't the one I'd planned for them.

I used to think letting go meant I'd failed. Now I read it as editing. Every time I stop offering something, the rest of the work gets clearer. Retiring a product doesn't erase what it meant at the time, and it doesn't mean it was a mistake to make. Things are allowed to be right for a chapter.

Fewer, better choices beat more choices made faster. Clarity usually comes from subtraction.

What this actually looks like

Deciding what to make is not a fixed system. It's a conversation between curiosity, capacity and care, and it changes as the business does.

If you're stuck between twelve ideas: you don't have to act on all of them. You're allowed to let some go. Waiting is a decision, not a delay.

 

If the ideas are piling up faster than you can decide on them, that's usually a symptom of something further upstream. I am building something that might help. In the meantime, find me at thewhimsicalrepose.com or on Instagram.