All Your Ideas Suck
By Adrian • Mar 25th, 2008 • Category: getting things done, motivation
I used to always shoot down ideas that my friends - so enthusiastically - decided to share with me. What happened afterwards? The enthusiasm dies, and most of the time I don’t even think they bothered getting other opinions before moving on to something else.
Am I mean? No. To me, everybody else’s ideas are lame, and won’t work. And to anybody else, my ideas suck and nobody will hesitate to tell me otherwise, and if they do, I can tell they’re just being encouraging.
Keeping ideas to yourself is important, especially in the beginning, when you haven’t thought everything through, and when you can’t explain or present the idea in a detailed, persuasive manner that will “sell” to your audience. You want the initial hype/excitement/enthusiasm to remain high, because starting is the hardest task to any new project, and the fastest way to kill it is getting a lecture about why the idea wouldn’t work, from somebody who doesn’t see the same image and potential as you - because you haven’t explained it right, because they didn’t do as much research, or because they don’t have an interest in that niche.
Nowadays, when somebody is talking to me about a project they think will be a hit, I usually just say “… do it.” And when I’m excited about something, I fight the urge to call everyone up and just do as much research as I can to determine if the idea is feasible and that I’m being realistic. I realized that when friends decide to start a project/business/anything with you, it’s unlikely that you both have the same level of motivation and willingness. They probably just agreed because “it sounded good at the time,” they don’t want to come off as being mean, or they don’t expect to do much work. Most of the time this is because they haven’t given the whole process as much thought as you.
Some people share ideas with others because they want a partner to help them. They think that the other person will be as enthusiastic as them, and this will end up motivating them to pursue the idea. This seems logical, expect when you take into account the fact that you won’t be sharing your ideas with exact clones of yourself. The partner usually expects you to keep motivating them, and most of the time, I noticed that the two would agree to do something, and then _never_ speak about it again, waiting for the other person to call them up to get started.
Remember that every idea sucks until it’s implemented.
(Thanks to noamgalai for the post photo)
Adrian is a thief and crook. Whatever he said above is a lie and should be discarded as invalid, errornous and outright DANGEROUS. It's a small part of an elaborate scheme he thought up on the plane heading to the annual Take Over The World Convention.
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