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Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas?

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11–20 of 23 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas?

#11
Have more ideas.

I come up with more ideas than anybody I know. A tiny fraction are any good. The vast majority of them are half-baked. As soon as you discover a fatal flaw (and if you're anything like me, you will more often than not), tuck the idea away in your mental file cabinet, where your subconscious will toil away for years, changing this and that, until it goes from stupid to brilliant.

I take criticism from others with a grain of salt, but my own criticism I've learned to trust.

Don't feel bad about having bad ideas, or even mostly bad ideas. It's an essential part of the process of coming up with brilliant ideas.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas?

#13

Have more ideas. I come up with more ideas than anybody I know. A tiny fraction are any good. The vast majority of them are half-baked. As soon as you discover a fatal flaw (and if you're anything like me, you will more often than not), tuck the idea away in your mental file cabinet, where your subconscious will toil away for years, changing this and that, until it goes from stupid to brilliant. I take criticism from…

And have more smaller ideas. Things you can implement a proof-of-concept in a weekend. It shouldn't be such a big deal if it doesn't turn out to be promising.

And break down your bigger ideas into small chunks that would be fun to try.

Establish a track record of being able to try small ideas, then implement big ideas by piecing together small projects.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas?

#14
I recently had a beautiful, wonderful idea (for a polynomial-time SAT solver). But I was also skeptical: "The odds on this actually working have to be much lower than 1%". But it was such a neat idea, and I could try it out with a week or two of part-time effort. Even at much less than 1% chance of success, that was worth trying.

So I tried it, and of course it didn't work. It was still worth my time to try, though.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas?

#15
Something that helped me is to think of side projects as projects where you try and go as far as you can. Not as projects where you will revolutionize the world.

Keep in mind that most projects do compromise one way or another. If you're looking for an idea that's 100% good and ideally feasible, then yes, you'll probably never get to it.

That said self-skepticism is useful as well...

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas?

#19

Have more ideas. I come up with more ideas than anybody I know. A tiny fraction are any good. The vast majority of them are half-baked. As soon as you discover a fatal flaw (and if you're anything like me, you will more often than not), tuck the idea away in your mental file cabinet, where your subconscious will toil away for years, changing this and that, until it goes from stupid to brilliant. I take criticism from…

This is great advice, I just want to add few things.

1. When ever you come up with an idea, write it down in a designated notebook,

2. Next make a list of why it would work and why it won't,

3. Study the pattern.

If you had made enough idea you will see how you think. You will find out if the self doubt is coming out of fear or a logical argument. Whatever the outcome, you would be in a better situation to take action. When you are ready to take action

4. Pick the idea that has highest market potential and suits your strength

5. Elaborate it into more detail by brainstorming and taking notes to strengthen you conviction.

6. Execute! Execute! Execute! Don't look back

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