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Idea Debt

jessicaabel.com

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Re: Idea Debt

#71

Post by beat »

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…

Have you read The Lean Startup? That can help.

Also, TSTTCPW (the simplest thing that could possibly work). Pry a little piece of it loose. Don't think too much about which piece. Build the simplest possible version of that little piece. "Simplest" can be a tremendous challenge in itself, because scope creep and gold-plating are so easy. Part of the work will be decoupling your little piece from the rest of it. But make something that works!

Re: Idea Debt

#73

Post by jjaredsimpson »

dandrick wrote: post #70

I don't see the difference between this and procrastination - there doesn't seem to be a great deal of new insight here.

procrastination is delay in doing things you don't particularly want to do but still understand are obligations. Delaying doing homework/office work/yard work.

idea debt is: the struggle with creative sunk costs. Thinking in circles about something you are interested in while accomplishing no really progress in making your idea a tangible thing.

Re: Idea Debt

#74

Post by cableshaft »

While a lot of people have tons of ideas that they can only execute on a few of them, there's quite a few people have the talent to make things that don't have the deluge of ideas invading their mind every day.

I think the idea people should be a little less protective of their ideas, especially the ones they know will never get made, and flesh them out just enough so others can run with it, and then put it out there somewhere.

I know there's a couple sites based on this concept, but maybe it could be something where ideas could get upvoted and the more visible ones might get people on board.

I don't know, sometimes I think that's what people are trying to do when they make a project open-source sometimes.

But yeah, there's a bunch of junk I come up with that aren't bad ideas, but I'll never realistically invest the time to get them done, especially considering all my other projects.

Re: Idea Debt

#75

Post by junto »

xhrpost wrote: post #52

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 justi…

I don't know if this is just me, but I used to be full of ideas, half finished projects and several projects that I talked myself out of.

Since having children, I no longer have ideas, and rarely work on anything than paid contract work.

Has anyone else experienced this? I feel void of ideas.

Re: Idea Debt

#76

Post by bitJericho »

cableshaft wrote: post #74

While a lot of people have tons of ideas that they can only execute on a few of them, there's quite a few people have the talent to make things that don't have the deluge of ideas invading their mind every day. I think the idea people should be a little less protective of their ideas, especially the ones they know will never get made, and flesh them out just enough so others can run with it, and then put it out there…

It's called crowdsourcing and I haven't seen it really work because ideas are a dime a dozen. Create. Don't think about it.

Re: Idea Debt

#77

Post by marknutter »

junto wrote: post #75
xhrpost wrote: post #52

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 justi…

I don't know if this is just me, but I used to be full of ideas, half finished projects and several projects that I talked myself out of. Since having children, I no longer have ideas, and rarely work on anything than paid contract work. Has anyone else experienced this? I feel void of ideas.

I have experienced exactly this, but it was in combination with also switching from freelance to full-time employment. I used to have a new idea every day back when I was freelancing and didn't have kids. Now I'm lucky if I think of one every couple of months.

I actually think this is due to having less time to just explore the internet, read about interesting things, try out other products, etc. I spent a large amount of time doing that when I was freelancing and although it might seem like a waste of time on the surface, I believe it was what allowed me to connect certain dots about niche opportunities that weren't being exploited that I might not otherwise have noticed.

Re: Idea Debt

#78

Post by aturek »

vog wrote: post #4

This is why I moved a huge portion of my TODO list into an IDEAS list. This is an outliner document (Org-mode) that contains notes on lots of different ideas. So why didn't I just delete those items? Because writing down that stuff helps me not to think about it the whole day if I don't want to. The IDEAS list grows and grows, but that's okay. I don't feel obliged to implement any of these ideas. Whenever I recall an…

Great reminder to cull the backlog of my personal todo list!

Re: Idea Debt

#79

Post by im_down_w_otp »

junto wrote: post #75
xhrpost wrote: post #52

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 justi…

I don't know if this is just me, but I used to be full of ideas, half finished projects and several projects that I talked myself out of. Since having children, I no longer have ideas, and rarely work on anything than paid contract work. Has anyone else experienced this? I feel void of ideas.

Not exactly congruent experience here, but something similar has manifested itself for me in "number of f*cks given, zero".

Though I attribute this less to having a kid and more to just not being able to drum up the exuberance for the endless stream of wheel-reinvention that seems to be commonplace in tech right now. I can still get interested in novel or sufficiently esoteric things, but the endless parade of random javascript UI frameworks, dashboards as a service, fitbits for dogs, and all-new-way-to-send-dick-pics chat platform just isn't very compelling.

It often seems like today's marketplace is one of "me too" ideas. "Me too" ideas are boring. Like hearing a really fascinating story at a dinner party, and then the person next to them tells a worse version of something similar, and then the person next to them tells a still worse version of similar, but slightly different thing, and so on until the conversation reaches you and you realize that the last person talking to you was actually a plain baked-potato, but you didn't notice because the level of intrigue had dropped so low that a butterless, chiveless, baconless potato had stolen the spotlight.

When I was younger the "computer" part of computer science was enough to keep my attention, as I get older I'm finding that the "science" part is what sustains my engagement with the field.

Re: Idea Debt

#80

Post by rgoddard »

vog wrote: post #23
boothead wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems similar to the idea of a spark file? http://lifehacker.com/5941997/defrag-your-brain-with-a-spark... edit Also do you have anything written down about using org-mode for todos and ideas?

> This seems similar to the idea of a spark file? Indeed! The concept of a "spark file" describes exactly what I'm doing. > Also do you have anything written down about using org-mode for todos and ideas? This is pretty basic Org-mode usage. My To-Do list is just nested headings, each with a TODO or DONE marker (Shift+Left, Shift+Right). My IDEAS list doesn't even have those markers, it is just nested headings and ne…

I would highly recommend learning some of agenda mode. I originally started with only using the tree editing features. But one of the coolest features is the agenda mode and the fact that you can create custom views which pull in all the details you want. Here is the view I use all the time:

  (setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("w" "Agenda and Next todos"
         ((agenda "" ((org-agenda-ndays 1))) ;show anything scheduled for today including habits
          (todo "NEXT|IN PROGRESS"
                ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Working On"))) ;things that I am currently working on
          (todo "TODO"
                ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Check Todo's"))) ;Todo items to check on periodically
          (todo "WAITING"
                ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Waiting On"))))))) ;things I am blocking on
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