Whatever project you’re working on, it’s difficult not to get sidetracked by new thoughts and ideas along the way. You don’t want to lose these ideas, but if you work on each one as it comes up, you’ll never get anything finished.

Here at Contactzilla, we’re always working on new ways to improve our contact management system. Every time we get to work on the next shiny new feature, we start coming up with a million ideas for other new features and improvements we could also be working on. In software design, this is known as feature creep and it can be a real problem for all different types of projects.

To keep us focused on the task at hand, we store these ideas in our virtual “bucket of love”. If we still think they’re good ideas when we’ve finished the project, we can then consider implementing them.

To follow this workplace hack, you will need to create your own “bucket of love”. We keep our Contactzilla bucket of love as a to-do list in Basecamp. Every time you have a new idea, no matter how vague or silly, record it in the bucket of love.

Set a time to go through your bucket of love (for us, it’s after we’ve completed a project, like a new Contactzilla feature) to decide if your ideas are worth implementing in the future.

How do you deal with feature creep? Share your experiences in the comments below!

This hack is part of a series of weekly workplace hacks that teaches you about collaboration, productivity and time saving tips. Published every Wednesday.

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