Whether you have a business idea or not, here's what I want you to do?

I want you to take a pen and paper and go and sit somewhere quiet in your home where you will not be distracted. Get comfortable. Take a deep breath and relax for a moment.

Now I want you to write down everything you WANT in life. That's right. Everything that you wish you had in your life. It might be a new car, a house with a walled garden, some new and beautiful clothes, a swim with the dolphins, an arctic cruise, new watch, the latest Laptop, whatever? Just write it down. At least twenty-five things, but it could be twenty pages long.

Spend some time writing down everything that you could want in this life and desire. You can also write down things that you WANT in your relationships with other people. Such as "love". You can think about the kind of relationships you have with people. Do you surround yourself with people who:

Make you feel better about yourself or worse about yourself? Tend to be stronger than you or weaker than you? Are in better or worse financial shape than you? Have more real friends than you, or fewer? Place a higher value than you on honesty, integrity and commitment? So write it all down.

The next thing I want you to do is to write down all the things that you feel you NEED to do. Things that you would need to do or would like to accomplish. This can range from organising the carpet cleaner to writing your will. It could be that you need to visit your Mum or set up a new email account for your business.

Write it all down. Things you need to do for your business and things for your personal life - just write them all down. If you can get a good unconscious 'flow', going, so much the better. Don't worry too much about going into detail, you can do that at a later stage.

Now I want you to take a new pad of paper and write down everything that you are GOOD at, problems you can solve, things you can do. It can be driving a car or organising a meeting. It can be fixing a tap or writing articles. Think of as many things as you can and write them down. (You can put 'reading for ideas', as one of them, you are reading this, after all!) Keep going until you have at least twenty five.

After you have brain dumped everything you are good at, you need to write down things that you LOVE doing or are interested in. So for example you might love horses, travel, parachuting, socialising with friends, persuading people or using a computer. If you find that you enjoy doing just a few things, then list those things in more detail. So, for example, if you love reading, ask yourself 'What books' exactly - categories, titles, authors, genre/ Write all of them down, as many as you can.

The final thing I want you to do is to write down all the business IDEAS that you have - whether it's ideas for creating new products, for your existing business, running some new promotion or new ideas for a business. Write them all down.

You will find that putting together combinations of what you are GOOD at and what you LOVE doing, will inspire business IDEAS for you. This way you can be sure you have explored all your potential job preferences.

After you have written down all those things that you WANT (both material and relationship), everything you feel that you NEED to do and all of the business IDEAS you have then you need to start transferring these to another writing pad. You are going to create a list of the top five WANTS, NEEDS, IDEAS and the ACTIONS you can take to accomplish these.

Once you have identified the TOP FIVE items in each list of WANTS, NEEDS and IDEAS, you can list ACTIONS to take for each of them. This is an easy way of PRIORITISING what you need to do to accomplish first, then second, and so on until your last item is the last thing you should be doing when everything else is accomplished.

You should now have a list of your five top job or business IDEAS. Now a really great way of deciding on which job or business idea you should start with is to take each IDEA on your list and RANK it out of 5 (5 is high) for 1) Your level of interest. 2) Your knowledge of the how to do the job. 3) Level of experience. Create a table like this and you will be able to see at a glance what you need to do in order to bring your skills and experience :

Job Preferences Interest Knowledge Experience 1. Corporate Executive Coach 5 4/5 4 2. Training Consultant 5 3 2 3. Project Management Expert 5 3 4 4. Interim Management Agency 4/5 2 2 5. Online Pet Wholesalers 5 2 1

It's much better to do this exercise in writing and keep the list next to your computer so you can see it ALL the time. Now start with number one on your list of ACTIONS to take and when you have finished it - strike it though with a pen.

Some of your wants are obviously going to have to wait until you have the money for them. You will need to achieve your financial milestones with your business. But you will and then you can buy these WANTS along the way and strike them off your list as you go.

After you have done this whole exercise of getting things down on paper, you'll feel brilliant. Not only will it allow you to free-up your mind, so that you are no longer focusing on a hundred things at once, allow you to think more clearly but it immediately creates an ACTION list that you can immediately start accomplishing. You'll be surprised how fast you can get things done. The faster you get things done, the faster your business will grow and the faster you will be able to strike off those WANTS.

Hi I'm Margaret Stead - a Dream Architect, helping individuals, executives and business owners market themselves online into new jobs, careers - building customer-employer relationships and increasing their job satisfaction.

I offer personal career coaching, workshops, tutorials and classes reports on the telephone and in one to one meetings that help people just like you do job hunting that gets results. You can learn more about my terrific online resources at http://www.careersnet.com or read my popular newsletter. (http://www.careersnet.com/default.asp?page=news0205)