Originally published January 2016. Updated May 2026.

Do you have a big creative project in mind? One with no deadline, no one waiting for it, no way of knowing whether anyone really needs or wants it.

Yet you lie awake thinking about what might go into it, what the characters look like, how the audience will line up to get their hands on it. You imagine what it will feel like to have this project under your belt, and what kind of effect it will have on your life.

Let me tell you about Forest Lords.

Forest Lords is a series of ten fantasy novels, each a 1000-page brick, about the epic adventures of Greenleaf Barksley, elf proletarian, and his journeys to attain the Golden Leaf and save his homeland from the scourge of the Curse of the Titaness Denox.

The thing is, none of this series exists—not even Forest Lords Volume One: The Elven Soul. There are binders and binders of “lore.” There are a hell of a lot of character designs (that look suspiciously similar to Elfquest characters).

There is the vivid, lively picture the putative author has in his head of how it’s going to feel to write a fantasy series that has everyone panting for the next book or movie or TV show.*

But there is no book. There is only Idea Debt.

*(As a matter of actual fact, there are no binders either. This concept was invented by Benjamin Frisch when he was a snotty teen to poke fun the massive Idea Debts being racked up by others he encountered in the comics scene.)  

If…

• You tell 15 friends about your screenplay idea, but devote zero time in your week to facing the blank screen.
• You’ve built three editorial calendars, have a Substack account, a domain name, and a logo, and zero published posts.
• You’ve got a drawer full of half-finished stories and novels and a to-do list item every week that reads, “work on writing.”
• You have two MFAs and are considering a PhD, but have not sent out a single submission.
• You have “binders of lore” and no book.

…you’re living with serious Idea Debt.

If you’re feeling a little called out right now, with too many creative projects and not enough finished, you probably think of what’s going on as procrastination or perfectionism. But those are both symptoms. The underlying problem is Idea Debt.

What is Idea Debt?

Idea Debt is the accumulated mental burden of all the ideas and unfinished projects you’ve already emotionally invested in, and that you’re planning to get to someday, somehow, once you figure out how to fit them in.

Idea Debt is not a wishlist. These are ideas and projects you’ve put some thought into, and in many cases, you’ve put real time into, with notes, research, or even half-finished drafts.

When I first published this article back in 2016, I called it, “Imagining Your Future Projects Is Holding You Back,” which is still true. The lived experience of Idea Debt is spending too much time picturing what a project is going to be like, too much time thinking about how awesome it will be to have this thing done and in the world, too much time imagining how cool you will look, how in demand you’ll be, how much money you’ll make. And way too little time actually making the thing.

But it goes so much deeper than that. Maintaining a backlog of ideas and half-finished projects over the long term steals your capacity to do, really, any of it at all. The problem isn’t just how much time you spend thinking about them.

It’s that finishing anything at all means coming to terms with what you’re capable of today.

Saying no to anything means cutting off a possible future.

Acknowledging you can’t actually do it all is akin to…gulp…mortality.

Noncoincidentally, this is the central problem the Creative Focus Workshop is built to solve.

That specific type of stuck—pulled toward a dozen projects at once, unable to move toward any one of them—is something I’d felt deeply for my whole career. I felt a deep relief of recognition when the concept finally got its name from cartoonist  Kazu Kibuishi in my interview with him for Out on the Wire episode 7: Dark Forest.

Here’s Kazu:

I’m not just fulfilling some old promise that I made a long time ago. Now I’m actually solving problems in the moment, and that’s so much more exciting than trying to fulfill years of what I like to call my “idea debt.”

I used to go snowboarding a lot. And I used to like hitting all the jumps. And when I would go down the mountain, I would notice a bunch of young snowboarders who were waiting at the top of the jumps. They may look like they’re waiting their turn. But in fact, they’re waiting there because they’re actually kind of afraid to hit that jump. And what they don’t realize is that over time, they’re getting colder, they’re physically getting colder.

The idea debt of having to make that jump and land it and be impressive is getting greater. So that by the time they actually do it, they’re probably not going to fulfill that dream.

And so one thing I learned is to just hit the jump or just pass it. Just do it in the moment. Or not at all. And so you can move on and wait for the next time.

Idea Debt Type P

After I posted the Idea Debt article on my blog, Kazu replied in a tweet, “If I knew I would write/draw 9 volumes before starting Amulet, not sure I would have started. Glad I did!”

Of course he’s right. Part of avoiding Idea Debt is acting before you think too much and get overwhelmed by how hard and important your project feels. That’s what Kazu meant when he said, Just take the jump.

Type P for Perfectionism

If Kazu had spent too long ruminating on how hard nine volumes of his graphic novel would be, we’d all be short one incredible series, and he’d be stuck with a mountain of Idea Debt Type P.

Idea Debt Type P happens when you give so much weight to a project, how well you execute it, how it will land in the world, what it will do for your career, that you feel completely inadequate to the job. In other words, perfectionism.

P stands for perfectionism and procrastination, two tendencies that will blow any project out of proportion to what it actually is.

You picture how great the thing will be. Then you think about how inadequate your current skills are. Then you stop.

Those fears may get you stuck in research mode, telling yourself you’ll start when you’re “ready.” Or maybe you become a 90-percenter, getting oh-so-close to the finish line but never quite crossing it. Or you might never start at all.

But if you don’t try to make the thing, even with your current skill set, and learn to live with the difference between what you imagine and what you are now capable of, you will never become capable of bigger, better things.

There is no bridge over the gap.

Ira Glass, the host and producer of the radio show, This American Life, recorded an interview many years ago about how to become a great storyteller where he named something he called “The Gap.”

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. We get into this thing, I don’t even know how to describe, but there is a gap. For the first couple years you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You know what I mean? You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy.

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit.

And if you are just starting out or you are entering this phase, you gotta know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re gonna finish one story.

You’ve just gotta fight your way through that.

Ira’s right: the only way through the gap is to make a lot of work, including a lot of bad work. Where we differ is on how. “Fight your way through” is not a plan. It’s just what most people try because they have no idea how to make one.

What actually makes it possible to “do a huge volume of work” is having a system built around your real life and capacity rather than a rigid schedule (“put yourself on a deadline”). In other words, a Flexible Container: a system for finishing your self-generated creative work that’s structured enough to keep you moving, flexible enough to survive contact with real life.

Idea Debt Type N

But there’s another kind of Idea Debt, a sneakier, more dangerous kind. This type is represented by the second part of Kazu Kibuishi’s snowboarding analogy: “Just take the jump, or skip it.”

This type is what you get when you carry Idea Debt Type P for too long, and your life moves on but your idea hangs on. When you’ve put in hours, days, even years of thinking and planning on a project, to abandon it feels like betrayal of your earlier self as well as a waste of all that time and energy.

But breaking a promise to someone who no longer exists—that is, you, ten years ago—is perfectly OK. It does not make you untrustworthy.

In fact, sunsetting these projects requires something far more radical: acknowledging that the time you have in your life is finite, you literally can’t do everything, and that choosing what you will make means choosing what you won’t.

No amount of negotiating with your to-do list will allow you to sidestep this reckoning.

Type N for Nostalgia

Idea Debt Type N: “N” stands for Nostalgia and how attachment to an old idea and an old version of yourself can overshadow what your current self truly needs and wants.

The fact that you’ve put in hours and hours on this project feels important. But that time is gone. You can’t get it back. Continuing to invest in something that no longer fits you doesn’t recover what you spent. It just adds to what it’s cost you.

Idea Debt Type N is akin to what economists call the Sunk Costs Fallacy: the more time and energy you’ve devoted to a project, the harder it is to walk away. Even when walking away is your best option.

It’s a fallacy because having invested in something does not make it better or more important than something you haven’t.

We are weighed down by old ideas. If we don’t truly shake free of them, some part of our brains is devoted to processing them at all times.

Financial debt limits your choices because you’re obligated to pay it back whether you want to or not. Idea debt works the same way. It consumes your capacity whether you’re focused on those projects or not.

I’ve carried a huge amount of Idea Debt Type N. So many of the projects on my “someday/maybe” list belong to other, earlier versions of me, not the me of today.

• Screenplay of one of my books? 2007. No one is asking for it, and I haven’t been in that headspace since at least 2009.
• Ebook series of my unpublished YA novel? 2006. Does that mean I’d have to actually read it again?
• Sequel in a series? 2009. After the first one didn’t work? Why would I do that to myself?
• Literary graphic novel idea? That one has been hanging around since 1998 or so.

When I finally let those projects go, I felt immediate relief. The capacity I recovered went straight to the work that actually matters to me now.

Why Idea Debt is really a failure of decision

For creative people, it’s inevitable that you’ll build up a backlog of ideas. But ideas turn into Idea Debt in a very specific spot in the Creative Engine—my four-phase framework for finishing self-generated work. And that’s right at the doorway to the Decide phase.

The first phase of the Creative Engine is Collect, and it’s the most popular phase by far: research, brainstorming, gathering ideas. If you feel like you have too many ideas and not enough time to act on any of them, this is probably where you spend most of your time.

It’s generative, it’s fun, until it isn’t. Collect can go on indefinitely, and when it does, it starts to feel like a trap. Always preparing, never doing the thing.

The problem is that without a deliberate transition to the second phase, Decide, where you actually choose what you will work on (and even more importantly, what you won’t) everything you’ve collected just accumulates.

This is especially challenging for self-generated projects (see: Forest Lords)—projects with no deadline, no client, no one waiting or asking for it. Without that external accountability, there’s nothing to force you over the threshold of Collect into Decide. You can live with the fantasy of making the thing indefinitely. This is why the Creative Focus Workshop puts such emphasis on the Decide phase. It’s where projects live or die.

The longer projects sit in the Collect phase, the harder it will be to get them moving. They turn first to Idea Debt Type P, then they eventually curdle into Type N. And the more idea debt accumulates, the less capacity you have to move forward with any of it.

The point, after all, is to make the thing, and that’s in the third phase of the Creative Engine, Act. The Decide phase is what gets you there. It helps you sift a pile of ideas and identify the one project that’s right for who you are now. Skip it, and you don’t go faster. You just accumulate debt.

When this article ran in 2016, Oliver Burkeman picked it up in the Guardian, pointing out a potential failure point: “deciding” can feel so powerful that it may become a substitute for doing. He’s not wrong. I can remember plenty of times that I’ve “decided” to do something and then felt sort of…complete. And never done the thing. That doesn’t mean that deciding isn’t necessary, though. Without conscious decision, action is scattered and unfocused. Backsliding and self-doubt send you back to the starting line in Collect. It’s just that Decide also needs to serve as a waystation to Act.

Start here: the Idea Inventory

Before you can decide, you need to know what you’re deciding between.

Get a piece of paper (yes, actual paper) and write down every idea and unfinished project that has a claim on your attention, however faint.

Then fold it up and carry it with you. Clip a pen to it, and when you think of more ideas for your list, add them.

Let it sit for a few days. Try to allow yourself to be a little bit bored. Don’t scroll your phone when you’re in line. Don’t listen to a podcast on your commute. Your brain will keep working on it in the background.

The goal isn’t to do anything with the list yet. It’s to get it all out of your head and into a form you can see and hold. Making your Idea Debt visible is the first step toward being able to decide what you will do, and what you won’t.

What to do next to clear your idea debt

The first step is to try the Idea Inventory.

Once you do that, your next question will be something like, well, now what the hell do I do with all this? Making decisions about long-held Idea Debt projects is fraught in the best of circumstances. I’m here suggesting that some of these ideas might be candidates for sunsetting…permanently. That might bring up a lot of stuff. All these ideas are on the list in the first place for real reasons, even when those reasons are no longer as compelling as they once were.

I won’t lie; this is not easy. But your next step might be to get a clear picture of where idea debt lives in your creative process. With your Idea Inventory in hand, I have a free class that will take you through what comes next, and what it means to have that clarity of thinking and decision-making.

If you’re ready to implement decisions and take action on your self-generated creative projects, check out the Creative Focus Workshop. This is where you can get my support to make clear, confident decisions about what to work on, build your Flexible Container to support consistent action, and get your project finished.