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Idea Debt

jessicaabel.com

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Re: Idea Debt

#51

Post by daralthus »

nsb1 wrote: post #41

Thinking of this as 'debt' doesn't seem quite right to me. It's not like someone's going to come and break your kneecaps some day if you don't act on these ideas. You don't owe these ideas to anyone, and you don't have to 'pay them back'. Calling this debt is like calling the hours while we sleep and are not being paid 'income debt', or calling our front lawn 'food debt' because we haven't planted a garden there. How…

While 'debt' might be inaccurate, keeping lots of ideas in head definitely cripples you in my experience. They force you to always consider them as an option every time something new comes up and that quickly leads to decision fatigue.

In the meantime 'idea investment' is spot on.

Re: Idea Debt

#52

Post by xhrpost »

This, this is probably the biggest and yet least recognized obstruction for wannapreneurs. I know because I've been there myself for years and have only recently realized what I was doing. I would get really excited about an idea, start working on it, only work on the interesting parts (not on what actually had to come next) and then let it fizzle away as the next wave of emotion came with another idea. I would justify this cycle with the emotion dip itself, if the next step in the process was not interesting or uncomfortable, that I was my reason to leave it. Surely the next idea won't have any of those areas.

The author mentions piles of lore and doing research. For me, research was basically entrepreneurial porn. My mind thought I was getting something that it really wasn't. I thought I was making progress by researching everything but in reality, I was just building piles of lore. A company I'm currently working on, with all this in mind, I've decided to do no extra research beyond what is needed in the moment. Forcing myself to steer clear of the research trap and instead only work on what is going to get me to the next point.

I could go on and on about this topic, it's not talked about nearly enough. It seems like everyone has an idea for a company, app, startup, etc. Us developers sometimes roll our eyes. We think it's their idea that is bad, or that they're just following the startup hype. In reality though, none of that is true, the reason there idea isn't coming to life is because they're simply not doing it.

Re: Idea Debt

#54

Post by marcosdumay »

hellofunk wrote: post #25

Steven King has said something that I've come to support, that note/list-keeping is a great way to let bad ideas survive. He claims that a really good idea will survive in your head on its own, and a bad idea will die. And that by writing down every idea, you are polluting your landscape of possibilities by immortalizing ideas that are better left forgotten.

My ideas directory is so full of trash that it's pointless to list it... I don't think putting stuff there is a drag to me.

Anyway, I've had plenty of cases where I take notice of my original idea, and weeks later with a more worked-out solution in my head, I look at the notes and realize that my original idea was indeed much better than what I had on my head.

Re: Idea Debt

#55

Post by marcosdumay »

augustl wrote: post #44
rorykoehler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amazing how many of the ideas from my vault exist in some form or other in the real world now.

I love the phrase "if you're the only one with an idea, it's probably a bad idea" :)

There's something to be said about "idea space".

most ideas hold little variance, and other people will have them. But some ideas can hold so much variance that no, nobody else in the world will even think about it.

Re: Idea Debt

#56

Post by joslin01 »

ajuc wrote: post #39

IMHO the problem is talking. When you talk about your idea you receive big part of gratification for almost no effort.

I fully agree. I've seen this happen with my younger self countless times. I would get excited about an idea, tell someone all about it, and then suddenly feel less motivated to work on it. Anything I'm serious about, I try not to talk about anymore as a result.

Re: Idea Debt

#57

Post by draw_down »

It's much easier to think about things than to make them, so this is really the normal state of affairs. Not sure you can avoid it completely

Re: Idea Debt

#58

Post by marcosdumay »

stared wrote: post #9

I used to have ideas on a to-do list, but it was torturing me (especially as it takes a few orders of magnitude to come up with an idea, however elaborate, than to do it; and doing it is also a reality check - some things seam clever until you start doing it and meeting contradictions). Now it is a separate list, entitled "n-th-priority-tasks-tml.md". And I try to keep no regret for not doing things. For doing, as ch…

I have a directory. Every idea is either on a file, or a subdir that holds whatever work I've done on it. That subdir may hold a TODO list, scoped on that idea - if I ever work on that idea again, I'll probably start by reviewing the TODO.

I don't intend to work on 90% of what's there anymore, it's not a TODO list. It's just a set of info that I may use someday later. I don't even know what's in there.

Re: Idea Debt

#59

Post by marcosdumay »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #43

I've had this vision for a revolutionary system when I was 12. I think about it every single day. Yet, my only accomplishment is thousands of pages of notes and ideas about possible use cases for this system. I haven't wrote a single line of code. I tried blogging about it, but I can't decide where to start. You can find glimpse of the idea in some of my HN/Reddit posts/comments, but that's about it. This have never…

Thousands of pages of documentation must be how Hell feels like for engineers ;)

I'd start by reducing it. Either generalize or make it less ambitious (whatever fits better your idea).

Re: Idea Debt

#60

Post by jasode »

nsb1 wrote: post #41

Thinking of this as 'debt' doesn't seem quite right to me. It's not like someone's going to come and break your kneecaps some day if you don't act on these ideas. You don't owe these ideas to anyone, and you don't have to 'pay them back'. Calling this debt is like calling the hours while we sleep and are not being paid 'income debt', or calling our front lawn 'food debt' because we haven't planted a garden there. How…

>'Follow your dreams'...'Do what you love and the money will follow'...'Nothing ventured, nothing gained' these are phrases that all sound great from the other side of success, but when you have a normal life with a family and a mortgage, the decision to pursue your opportunities is not as cut and dried.

I agree with your point but I don't think that "taking entrepreneurial risks" is the emphasis of the author.

Instead, her theme seems to be more similar to these soundbites:

- he talks a big game but doesn't follow through with anything

- he has grandiose ideas but doesn't take any action

- he's stuck on "analysis paralysis"

Those ideas can be applied to other goals besides business execution. Goals like programming an ambitious open-source Facebook clone, learning ten foreign languages, climbing Mt Everest, etc.

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