Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?

You 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 probably because it is crap, since in practice it's not how great products get designed.

Instead, try to think of it in a top-down, breadth-first manner. Pick a market you care about, and the best product in that market. Then think for a week how you could improve that product by an order of magnitude. List ideas. Throw them out. List more. When we're talking about disruptive improvement, thinking about it in terms of "orders of magnitude" is hard, so try to think about it in terms of what huge, meaningful thing the users could do that they can't do now. Design a new product that has a fundamental reason to exist (doing the same thing differently is not a reason).

This way, instead of trusting in your idea, you'll have to put trust into the fact that you can design a great product. I found this to be much easier - in this case all you have to do, is do your best. It's hard for anyone to do anything more than that.

First, start talking to people and showing them your concepts. See Customer Development and start shaping your idea around what people really want and will use. Second, remember that the initial idea you start with will not be the final product. It almost never is. Iterate, improve and continue to develop that seed of an idea or product based on input from the first point I mentioned. Also, good ideas persist in your mind longer. If the same idea keeps coming back to you then start there and push hard on developing it further. Chances are someone else is also working on this idea so chances are you'll find a partner working on something similar and might end up working together. Having a co-founder helps with bouncing ideas back and forth and keeping optimistic when times look bleak.

It's a very healthy thing, in that it saves you from falling for fads, conspiracy theories, and so forth. But if you are doubting things like clockwork, then the safety valve has come to dominate the rest of the system, so to speak.this can become quite burdensome, especially when many entrepreneurs or innovators are untroubled by such considerations. Self-doubt of this kind can inhibit creativity, either due to repetitive fatigue or loss of motivation midway through a project. But by adjusting your perspective, you can make it work in your favor instead of feeling frustrated or depressed. Cultivating patience plays a key role in this.

Helpful tips I have picked up include: rationing your enthusiasm at the early stage so as to avoid regret over sunk costs; treating your loss of interest as a solvable problem with your business model rather than inherent unworthiness; keeping notes and revisiting older ideas regularly; completing small projects (very important, both for motivation and because every big project can be decomposed into smaller ones); giving away simple ideas - sharing creates virtuous circles and builds your social capital; and generally, developing your emotional intelligence.

Your ideas are aspects of yourself, and hesitancy about developing them is often rooted in memories of prior disappointment which you (understandably) have no desire to repeat: losing your enthusiasm is painful, but less so than having it crushed unexpectedly by someone else. 'Rejection therapy' is one way of getting over this - seek out or accept small rejections, and build up a thicker hide. Sharing some of what you can't use is a viable alternative strategy for those who dislike rejection, and if you feel a possessive twinge about some undeveloped idea, then maybe that's because it does have more potential than you were willing to admit during a critical phase.

The fact that you can inventively criticize your own ideas does not mean they are especially flawed. How many ideas do you know that are so perfect as to be beyond criticism? Even things like fire, the wheel and electricity have their downsides. Importantly, if your enthusiasms can be misplaced, so can your criticisms. In other words, just as you may feel you got carried away by the merits of an idea you had yesterday, you can get carried away by your ability to poke holes in it today. Ration your criticisms in the same manner as your enthusiasms, and accept that both are subjective expressions of your own priorities rather than inherent properties of an idea itself.

Lastly, consider whether your critical faculties are telling you to work on something different. Your words remind me of the phrase 'a solution in search of a problem,' and sometimes the world's response to creativity is not rejection but indifference, which is equally dispiriting. Lasers and many other inventions languished unused for many years, so this is nothing to be ashamed of. But if your ideas seem to lack utility, try seeking out problems instead - things that are clearly making life worse for people, but which are agreed to be unavoidable. These domains can be highly lucrative: after all, what are medicine and politics but attempts to mitigate death and taxes? Indeed, many therapists' and consultants' primary skill is that of identifying problems, and distinguishing between symptom and causes.

Read this great blog post from Vincius which aptly answers your question:

http://viniciusvacanti.com/page/2/

I've experienced hi's and lo's whilst developing a product. The thing that keeps me optimistic and excited is the possibility that the product becomes a success in some small or big way. Why not set yourself a challenge to develop something over the coming weeks/months and submit it here for review. If anything you'll learn something along the way. You will also get so much insightful feedback from the community that will help you develop your product further maybe. Pick your best idea and get to work is my advice. Be tenacious in your endeavours.