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Idea Debt

jessicaabel.com

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Re: Idea Debt

#2

Post by bobby_9x »

This has happened to many so many times. The other situation I've had is that even when I start working on my next idea, I start getting distracted by a ton of new ones.

Re: Idea Debt

#4

Post by vog »

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 idea, I go to that document, add some notes, and that's it. No deep research, no domain buying, no name searching. Just writing or extending on what comes to my mind, and roughly structuring it.

From time to time it happens that I do want to implement one of these ideas. And in that case I have some nice, simple spec to start from.

As a side note, I started to do that after I read "Writing, Briefly" from Paul Graham (http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html), which contains the following great advice:

    ...
    when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with;
    accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file;
    don't feel obliged to cover any of them;
    ...
These points are applicable far outside the scope of writing. In that sense, my IDEAS list is the clearly separated "bottom" of my TODO list that contains the "accumulated notes".

As a final note, this concept seems to be somehow related to the Not-To-Do list that some people advocate.

Re: Idea Debt

#5

Post by z3t4 »

I consider myself a very productive person ... But I just removed about 30 years of work from my todo-list, after reading this article.

Re: Idea Debt

#6

Post by elcapitan »

The concept is probably related to something you could call 'recursive idea debt' or 'recursive learning debt' in tech - when you come up with an exciting idea, and because you have no constraints you start thinking about this great new technology you would learn for that project and use. And then you would find 3 other interesting technologies or concepts related to that which you would want to learn more about. And so on.

Re: Idea Debt

#7

Post by benjaminjosephw »

> "If… you have 'binders of lore' and no book... you’re living with serious Idea Debt."

Moving from a daydream to some actual artefacts the first step _away_ from Idea Debt, not further into it. In technical terms, this could be writing a script instead of building an application or creating a spec and some documentation before writing some code. I'd argue that this is where you start to flesh-out and make real your idea.

Binders of "lore" would be an amazing resource to have at hand when you actually do come to writing your book. Surely this isn't a waste of time but it's where the idea ruminates, develops and matures. If anything, it improves the quality of an idea and can help make that idea a reality.

Re: Idea Debt

#9

Post by stared »

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 cheap as it may sound "just do it". As I heard from one writer "Imperfect books have one advantage: they exist". (At least for me perfectionism is the prime reason for delaying such projects.)

And one advice from a friend of mine, when I was delaying (for 2 years) writing a quantum game (http://quantumgame.io, coming this March!): "the only thing you lack is sitting on your ass and writing code". She was right.

Also, one of my write ups:

"If you have a great project, do moonlight. Don’t wait for better times, because they won’t come. Maybe you overstate the need of money, institutional support or social confirmation?" from http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects

Re: Idea Debt

#10

Post by danieltillett »

I love my idea debt. Not only are they a connection to my younger self, but old ideas are a rich ore to be mined for new ideas. Some of my best current ideas are old ideas that have been tweaked by experience or external change so they are now relevant. Keep working on your ideas, but make sure you are actually turning some of them into reality.
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