If you had to (legally) make an extra hundred bucks today, how would you do it? Can you list 3 possibilities? Or even five or ten?

I’ll bet that you could, or at the very least that you could if you got together with a group of friends and brainstormed possibilities.

(In fact if you want to, go ahead and list a few possibilities in the comments or think of a few ideas in your head.)

…

That’s the power of using urgency as inspiration. Urgency often forces action, but you don’t have to wait for a situation to become truly urgent in order to get inspired and then act. You just have to do it.

If you find “just doing it” difficult, you can trick yourself. For example, if you’re trying to reach a big goal like “make an extra $x each month this year”, set a timer and see how many moneymaking ideas you can come up with in 5 minutes. Maybe race a friend who has a similar goal. Wild ideas are welcome, so don’t edit any of your ideas. Silence your inner critic.

Then pick a few and do them. If they all seem kind of unfeasible (which is unlikely) see what parts of the ideas are salvageable, and then build on those.

For example, I could make an extra hundred bucks today by… selling an ad, shooting someone’s portrait, selling some things from around the house, washing a bunch of cars, etc. Now maybe washing enough cars in one day to earn $100 isn’t really feasible (and I hate washing cars anyway) but the idea behind it is good: doing some extra work.

Once you get the ideas flowing, you’ll be on your way.