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Idea Debt

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Re: Idea Debt

#131

Post by chiaro »

geezer wrote: post #86
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.

I would disagree with Steven King here. Once you write down ideas, it allows you to reconsider them later in a different light, a difference context. I believe that is extremely valuable because it is crucial to analyze an idea from various perspectives before embarking on implementing it. Embarking on an idea not well thought out can be extremely expensive.

Yep, definitely. The process of writing anything out (ideas, emotions, plans) lets you separate out the roles of describing the idea vs criticising it. Trying to evaluate them in your head requires you to do both simultaneously.

Re: Idea Debt

#132

Post by rorykoehler »

danieltillett wrote: post #115
augustl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This could be shortened to "if you have an idea then it is probably a bad idea" since most ideas are bad.

People seemed to take it as if I was bragging about how many good ideas I have had (parent comment 2 levels up). In reality what I find amazing is that most of my ideas were terrible, solutions looking for a problem, and I'm glad I didn't pursue them.

Re: Idea Debt

#133

Post by terryf »

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 find that having ideas and inspiration requires time where you are not actively doing anything, time that I used to call "being bored" when I was a kid, but now have come to realise that it is much more than that.

Having kids takes that time away by default, so you have to take it back yourself and of course it's always a trade-off.

For me the trade-off is: be active with the kids and house and life and push through all the time. In this case I'm pretty much wasted by the time they go to bed and can only sustain imgur or netflix for a bit before I go to sleep. The other option is to realise that it's better for everyone if I get some time for myself as well, so I take it. Some evenings I don't spend time with the kids for example and don't do anything much else either. In this case the next day I'm full of ideas and excited to try new stuff and I see that everyone around me is also better off due to this.

So, for me the lesson has been - learn to take time for yourself. Simply because in the long run it's better for everyone, both you and the people around you.

Re: Idea Debt

#134

Post by xhrpost »

xrange wrote: post #123
xhrpost wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on your way! Consider looking up Stanford Professor Tina Seelig, she's the only researcher I know of that remotely talks about this. Check out some of her talks and blog posts.

She has written a few books: http://www.amazon.com/Tina-Seelig/e/B00MAPL7P0 ...and has a blog: http://creativityrulz.blogspot.com/ ...and here are some video lectures: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/search;jsessionid=833B2D89C66AC2... ...any recommendations on the books?

I really still need to read her books, I've more just listened to some of her lectures and interviews. I first read an article she wrote for a 99U book though that I would recommend: http://amzn.com/B00CLVF2P4

Re: Idea Debt

#135

Post by mathattack »

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.

My 20/20 hindsight only remembers the great ideas that I never got around to chasing. (In 1991 - going long tech in Tel Aviv, in 1996 voice recognition for mobile...) As I've gotten older, the ideas come less frequently, perhaps because I've learned so many ways to dismiss them.

I think kids change our ambitions too. We care more about them than more broadly changing the world.

But when THAT idea strikes, I know I'll chase it.

Re: Idea Debt

#136

Post by tim333 »

jerf wrote: post #46
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…

I think the idea is that some people experience them as debt they owe themselves. If you've never felt that way, I can see why this would not make sense to you. (No sarcasm or harshness intended; I mean that straight.) Some of us had to come to this conclusion by a harder route. For myself, I still learned it fairly early, but I do remember learning it. My natural inclination was to finish everything. As I type that,…

I can see that - I've got ideas I've spent money and time on and I kind of think I owe myself a finished thing which has failed to materialize.

Re: Idea Debt

#137

Post by tim333 »

wellpast wrote: post #122
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.

I like this! Do you have a reference?

I tried googling King and failed to find him saying that but came across this quote

“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

Re: Idea Debt

#138

Post by kbutler »

pjmorris wrote: post #64

I've got a 'Current Task' text file, in which I write down everything I need or want to do that I'd expect I'd forget otherwise, prioritized by how soon and/or how urgently the thing needs to be done (Thank you, David Allen [0]). For example, the top of the file right now is my agenda for a meeting that's about to happen. Once the meeting's done, the agenda will go in a logbook file, and any action items will take th…

Reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is totally worth it. And doesn't take very long...

Re: Idea Debt

#139

Post by vog »

marcosdumay wrote: post #58
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.

Good point. This is also what I do with projects that have some (partial) implementation. Local TODO/IDEAS files are a very good thing.

However, most ideas didn't come to live (and probably never will), and I prefer to have those in a single file instead creating a separate file or directory for each topic. The reason is that some ideas are vague, and sometime I split or merge them.

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