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“Sleep on it”: The secret to effective conceptualisation

Have you been in a scenario where a really great concept suddenly pops in your mind but you weren’t sure if that’s really great? Usually, we list down various concepts or ideas and rule out the best option before we come up with a decision. It’s called the process of elimination. Although this process have worked for most of the brainstorming sessions, there are times when decision-making requires more than just removing other options. Enter: the power of sleep.

 

Before we fully understand the correlation between these two seemingly unrelated things, let’s understand these two factors a little further.

 

“Sleep on it!”

It’s an idiomatic expression which means postponing a decision until after a person sleeps through the night. It was as if someone is going to think through the decision while sleeping. It is widely understood that sleeping clears our minds and relieves ourselves of the stress. Generally speaking, sleep relaxes our minds. Sleeping organises our memories, process all the information for the day, and consequently solve some of our problems when we are too tied on urgency.

 

Sleeping on a decision are usually necessary when we are making a life-changing decision. Choosing over small options does not necessarily require overnight analysing of thoughts. So what do you consider a big decision? If that choice will impact something worthy or important – like family, money, business, or career – that’s what we consider as a big decision.  If the next decision that we will make is sure affect these things, we cannot help but be very careful in making a choice.

 

Let’s not drive away of the most basic decision that we, as marketers, have to deal with regularly – concepts and ideas. It’s the core of our existence. We have to strategise and win the market. We have come up with a mind-blowing idea that can both wow our clients and our target audience.

 

Conceptualisation

It’s the process of creating a concept or idea. Conceptualisation is part of our daily task –whether you are an account manager, a digital marketer, a web designer, or a writer. It’s important to be able to have a strategic approach in creating ideas to be able to meet the requirement of search engine Optimization. Whenever we have to come up with a presentation or a pitch for a new account, we have to study the customer’s needs, the market environment, the competition, the client’s current business strategy, and surroundings where the business is operating.

 

There are different processes in validating a concept. Some people do brainstorming sessions to come up with a collective idea, – which doesn’t need to be conducted in the four corners of their office – while some conceptualise all by themselves before presenting it to the team.

 

Contrary to what most people know, a light bulb doesn’t always represent a bright idea. And each time a new idea comes in, it will always feel as if you have nailed it. But regardless how you craft your concepts, deciding whether you have come up with the best one is the hardest part. Considering that you have to relate the strategic objectives of your idea to the objectives of your business or clients, it makes choosing more complicated.

 

With the availability of new technologies, it’s easier for us to build our ideas for conceptualisation process. But, it’s a matter of solving the problem of our users and customers, the process how we came up with a winning idea isn’t really important to them. Unless, you’ve made a billion bucks and you’ve shook the entire World Wide Web. That’s the only time that everyone will ask how you came up with that brilliant idea.

 

 

Sleeping on a concept, and what makes it powerful

Dealing with requests is like our pancakes for breakfast – a day will not be complete without it. And considering the guidelines that we need to follow prior to coming up with a genuinely unique and outstanding concept, we are sometimes bounded with pressure and stress. Basically, when we “sleep on it”, we are taking a break while our subconscious is trying to understand the pros and cons of a certain topic.

 

Truth to be told, conscious deliberation is required so we can come up with a firm, effective decision. But we cannot overlook the fact that our creative nerves work perfectly when it is rested. And in times when confusions and tensions arise, especially when we are dealing with our business, it will not harm to delay just one day to trust one of the proven, most mysterious part of human existence – our subconscious.