If you are your own worst critic that indicates that others think your ideas are valuable, but their opinion should be converted into money, so I should ask to those that give high value to your ideas to pay or to get a share of it. If they don't want to put a single buck in your pocket for following your ideas then you are not your worst critic but a realistic person. If they give you some money to continue, then try to change your mind, you have some value in your head.
Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
51–58 of 58 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#52Why don't you let the market decide? Let users decide. 1. Build a prototype 2. Launch it 3. Get feedback from users 4. Make changes* *which may mean you need to move onto another idea and build a new prototype Embrace "failure".
I'd like to echo seeing things through to a prototype. Unless theres some hurdle (technical, time, etc.) actually standing in your way, I fully support the idea of finishing the product in one form or another.
When you start questioning the idea, focus on the use case you're writing it for and cut out all the excess features that don't contribute to it. This will help you get closer to completion.
Remember that you're just one user and cannot possibly be representative of the population. Go test it to see what the market thinks!
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#53What is the problem with dropping ideas? What would you rather have happen?
I think the problem is when you drop all your ideas for over-thinking them too fast. I know exactly how the OP feels: I get an idea, start thinking about what would be needed to make it work, throw some stuff together and see that it could work, then either get satisfied that it's in the realm of the possible, or lose motivation by thinking the ratio usefulness/complexity is too low.
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#54I would like to share one quite from Gandhi:
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
People usually don't know what is a good idea / bad idea. Otherwise killer products can be made from market survey, but this is usually not the case.
I second the comment from switch. Also even you just got one user, you are still doing something for good. Start it small, just spend a week or so build a prototype and release it.
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#55It took me a while to gain enough confidence to start thinking, "well I was ecstatic about this idea yesterday, so there must be something good here".
Now I try to remember specifically what excited me. Not as a bullet point, but as a vision. What was the cool task I imagined accomplishing? What was I thinking of when I felt like I had the right answer? Usually that's enough to get me back in the same state of mind.
But keep talking yourself out of ideas. That's the only way to get rid of bad ones. Just don't forget the good parts. Ideas evolve; let natural selection run its course.
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#56I would run a blog with my real name and publish all the ideas I come up with.
I have two reasons for that:
1.) Experimentally, I observed that stating your brilliant idea on paper at the moment the idea starts to bug and distract you wears off the excitement and helps to get back to and concentrate on your real work after 1-2 hours of this distraction.
2.) Within several years, some projects along the lines of your published ideas would succeed (just statistically, most likely independently of your blog). You would have a nice public record of coming up with idea or maybe sometimes a reference.
3.) Chances are, someone else would take over your job of being your "worst critique" for the ideas.
( Apparently, this is more or less what Scott Adams does in his blog: http://www.dilbert.com/blog/ )
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#57Maybe you might want to change your goal from "getting the idea implemented" to "learning what you can from the project." More chance for success, and if the project continues past the previous fail points, you may have a winner.
Similar to enjoy the journey, rather than focusing on the destination.
Re: Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?
#58You can't talk yourself out of talking yourself out of ideas. What's happening is that your mind is telling you that your overall approach is wrong. You're thinking of ideas in a bottom-up, depth-first manner. You think of a product, and then your mind races through a chain of obvious conclusions of what the product and its features should look like. Then a few hours later your mind rejects it as crap. That's probabl…
tl;dr: Don't work on an "idea," design a "product."
Not that long, great comment above, read it!