
The problem with having great ideas - nodemaker
http://nodemaker.posterous.com/the-problem-with-ideas
======
jonnathanson
Sooner or later, I think all of us who are entrepreneurially inclined
encounter the paradox of outsized ambition. Big dreams seem necessary to keep
yourself motivated, and to overcome the crushing loneliness and uncertainty
that comes with striking out on your own. But those same dreams can be
convenient ways to avoid, defer, or will away present responsibility.

Know that the world will never reward you for the thousands of great ideas
you've come up with in your spare time. Those pipedreams will follow you to
the grave, and no one will speak of them when you're no longer around to do
so. But the world _will_ reward you for the one idea you managed to bring to
life. Maybe you won't strike gold, and maybe you won't become a "rock star"
fixture on the scene of your choice. But you'll have created something real.
You will have turned your time into great personal meaning, and, hopefully,
into value for others. And, if nothing else, you'll have learned that becoming
good at the task is more important than what started the task. (To your point,
being an entrepreneur isn't about generating brilliant ideas; it's about being
brilliant at implementing ideas).

As an aspiring writer, I went through a solid portion of my twenties telling
anyone who'd listen -- often women -- that I was a "writer." (I don't think I
ever became cheesy enough to call myself an "artist," but that thought
couldn't have been far from my mind at any moment). I enjoyed the status that
this self-imposed job description bestowed upon me -- or, more accurately,
upon my own self perception. But did I write a single work, significant or
otherwise, in those ten years? No. Instead, I focused on my "day job," and
continued to nurse the daydream.

Maybe something about turning 30 brought things into focus for me. Maybe Steve
Jobs's passing, coupled with his quotes about the clarifying force of
mortality, lit a fire under my ass. Maybe a few choice words from an ex
girlfriend provided a necessary reality check. And maybe the delayed
realization that Hank Moody's story on "Californication" is meant to be a
cautionary tale, and not an ideal, shocked me into submission to reality. I'm
not sure. But now I'm actually writing shit. And it feels good. The world may
never care about the product of my effort, but it sure as hell will never care
about my idle fantasies and unrealized concepts.

------
benohear
The problem with big ideas is that they are usually fantasies. And the problem
with fantasies is two-fold: First, dreaming about them will largely satisfy
you and reduce your urge to actually make it happen. Secondly, you will be
more easily discouraged when confronted with the obstacles that will come your
way.

According to the book "59 seconds", the trick to getting things done is to
interleave realistic daydreaming of the benefits of success with an assessment
of the biggest problems and setbacks you are likely to encounter. It motivates
you and puts you in a frame of mind of attacking the problems rather than
getting discouraged by them.

Also, big ideas tend to minimize implementation difficulties, which is also
why they make good fantasy material. Running the USA better than Obama? Easy -
I'd close Guantanamo, put the banks in their place, provide universal
healthcare, stop all wars, reduce defense spending and make sure businesses
that really create value have plenty of investment and freedom. But finding 10
new clients for my web design business in the next month? No way, man. That is
WAY too hard.

------
wickedchicken
The author appears quite young, so I want to give my two cents to him (her?):
when HN people downplay the importance of "ideas," be wary of what an idea
counts for in the HN community. A PHP photo sharing site[1], useful markov
chain eigendecomposition[2], and the underpinning of our entire industry[3]
are all lumped under 'ideas' and yet the HN crowd seems skewed toward being
the next PHP photo sharing site rather than the other two.

HN is focused primarily on business. A PHP photo sharing site has a much lower
effort-to-bux ratio than some wacky electrical switch. This is completely
fine, but you have to make the separation between "dollas" and "innovation."
Often they live under the same roof, but one doesn't automatically imply the
other. Ideas are where researchers play, and researchers are the antithesis of
business.

Your advice ('think less, do more') still stands. I just want to let you know
that ideas _do_ have merit, you just have to look in the right place. Good
luck!

[1] <http://www.facebook.com> [2] <http://www.google.com> [3]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor>

~~~
chmike
He doesn't downplay the importance of ideas. He points at the next step which
is to turn the idea into something real and concrete. Some people fail to even
start the next step. The concluding advice is to go for the next step and make
your idea/dream come trough.

------
mmj48
What atrocious writing.

The message (which was poorly conveyed) is correct however. Have results as
soon as you possibly can (just try not to sacrifice too much elegance).

A (lousy) example would be Linux & GNU Hurd.

~~~
nodemaker
:) Being the writer I would like to know more about why you find it
attrocious!

~~~
scotch_drinker
Just some random advice, consider some, all or none:

1\. Eliminate the following words and phrases: So, Now, But, In my opinion,
anything you might put in a text message to shorten it, 95% of all words that
end in "ly". Tighten things up. Nouns and verbs build great sentences, adverbs
and adjectives stink up the joint.

2\. Show, don't tell. Don't tell me it's not going to be a post about pickups.
Show me it's not.

3\. Effective use of parenthetical phrases is hard. Read some David Foster
Wallace for great examples. When you say "Ouch" then stick the rest of the
sentence in a parenthetical, it actually loses some of the punch because
instead of being orthogonal to the "Ouch", it's should be the punchline of
your joke.

4\. Use imagery to get your point across. Instead of saying that you'd get
wasted, say "If some chic said that to me, I'd be headed for a three day
bender that would make Ernest Hemingway look like a teetotaler." Paint the
reader a picture.

5\. I don't mind the "bro" style but it's going to put a lot of people off.
It's very tricky to do well but don't let that stop you if you like it. Style
is in the eye of the beholder. Just tighten things up a lot if you're going to
use it.

6\. Write it one day, proof and publish it the next. I find this to be
terribly difficult. However, you'd be surprised how much better an essay gets
with even a single revision. At the very least, write in the morning and
publish in the afternoon.

~~~
nollidge
Gonna have to disgree with #1. I think it's a giant myth that adverbs and
adjectives are somehow bad. By all means be _judicious_ in your use of them,
but it's absolutely ridiculous to say they're categorically taboo or
something. Same with So, Now, But - they _can_ stink up the joint if they're
every other sentence, but they can also help segue from one thought to the
next, or (in the case of In my opinion) allow for some disagreement to your
point.

Totally agree with #2: "Actually I will go even further and tell you that-"
can be eliminated. "I will share a personal example with you." Well, just go
ahead, I'll be able to follow along.

#6 is great, and I'd go one further and have someone you trust (or pay
somebody to) proofread as well, especially if it's not your native language.

~~~
scotch_drinker
The problem with "they can stink up the joint" is that writing that relies on
adverbs and adjectives does stink up the joint. Jazz musicians can break the
rules because they both know the rules and understand the rules. Beginners
can't break the rules because they don't know when broken rules are ok.

You have to learn how to write without adverbs and adjectives before you can
know when to "be judicious in your use of them". Our natural inclination is to
use them constantly (see, constantly). Learn how to write without them then
the occasional use of them will strengthen and empower your writing.

------
revorad
Ze Frank said it better in Braincrack -
<http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/replay/?p=363>

~~~
mmj48
Thanks, he made some strong points. I transcribed the most relevant part:

    
    
      If you don't want to run out of ideas, the best thing to do is not to execute them
      You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do them right
      Then they stay around in your head like brain crack
      So no matter how bad it gets, at least you have those "good ides" that you'll get to "later"
      Some people get addicted to that brain crack
      and the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed
      and they imagine it on a beatiful platter with glitter and rose petals
      and everybody is clapping, *for them*
      but the bummer is must ideas kinda suck when you do them
      and no matter how much you plan, you still have to do something for the first time
      and you're almost guaranteed the first time you do something it'll blow
      but somebody who does something bad three times still has 3x the experience of that other person who's still dreaming of all the applause.
      when I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out in the world asap
      cause I certainly do not want to get addicted to brain crack

------
invalidOrTaken
I didn't agree with the xkcd, and I don't agree with this post either.

Look, everyone _likes_ epiphanies. If you're reading HN, you probably like
them _more_ than most people. I don't think this is a bad thing. Yes, it's
important to be producing. Yes, you need feedback on your ideas from reality.
But this is only true if we have ideas to begin with. The widely accepted
startup methodology---start small and iterate---is just a process for
generating epiphanies.

If we're "stumbling from one epiphany to another," we're not acting on them,
or we only see part of the picture, or we just haven't gotten the right one
yet. Despairing that rather than our methods, it's _us_ that's broken is both
unfounded (really? You've had every epiphany ever?) _and_ unhelpful.

The girl in the comic is known to deploy cruelty for her own amusement; I
think the author had excellent insight into the newbie pickup artist's mind,
and gave his character a response calculated to strike at the core of the
would-be Casanova's psyche.

Anyway, thanks for the post, OP.

~~~
mmj48
Two different issues

As Ze Frank said:

    
    
      "The longer they [those with the "good" ideas] wait, the
      more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea 
      should be executed, and they imagine it on a beatiful 
      platter with glitter and rose petals."
    

It's a simple discussion about implementation. Not sure what you're arguing
against.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I guess I focused too much on the comic. You're right, the post does a good
job of stressing the importance of implementation.

But it also dismisses the value of ideas too glibly. Bill Gates may have been
"some dude who liked writing interpreters and funny games," but that is miles
ahead of some dude who liked making marijuana sculptures. The ideas were what
made the difference.

It doesn't seem odd to anyone that we're reading a post describing the
author's epiphany that epiphanies are useless?

~~~
mmj48
> But it also dismisses the value of ideas too glibly. Bill Gates may have

Agreed.

> It doesn't seem odd to anyone that we're reading a post describing the
> author's epiphany that epiphanies are useless?

Not overly so. Meta can cause strange cases of logic at times (e.g. there are
always exceptions).

------
bicknergseng
I really like this post for the guy's writing. The point he is making isn't
exactly novel, but the way he says it is so down to earth and conversational
that I felt like he and I were talking about it over a beer. Because so many
bloggers are condescending or preachy, I'll read a post and nod my head and
move on with my life without really lingering on whatever topic. I understand
but from a kind of 3rd person perspective as if x topic applied to y people
but not necessarily to me.

Now that I go back and read it again, I can't decide if the post actually did
that to me, or I read it wanting to believe it would.

------
dkrich
Just because you state something as if it is fact does not make it so. Do you
personally know Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, James Watt, or Albert
Einstein? Probably not. So how do you know what motivated them?

Even if you did, business rules are like looking through a prism. They seem
great from one angle, and then when you view another angle you realize the
previous one was just an illusion. Likewise, business rules sound great when
forcefully delivered, but if you ponder them for a little while longer, you
realize there are not only a few exceptions, but many, many exceptions.

I think the bigger problem that you are getting at is that most people come up
with an idea, and then when they don't see immediate success, move onto
something else that seems more promising. More often than not, the successful
people commit to a single idea they are passionate about, and see it through
because they believe in it and have a long-term vision for what they want to
create. If your goal is to be a millionaire before you are 30, well that is a
tough goal and if you don't see instant success you panic and shift to another
idea and another idea. Instead if you encounter a real problem and you say
"I'm going to solve this no matter how long it takes," you are probably a lot
closer to success than most.

I think Andrew Carnegie said it best when he said "No man can become rich
without himself enriching others."

------
scotty79
The problem is that constant replaying incredibly awesome ideas in you head
until you get bored with them is much more pleasurable than actually making
the effort to attempt to build it, watch it how horribly it came out and then
watch it crumble or go utterly unnoticed. Even if you succeed it sometimes
turns out less pleasurable than it was anticipated.

You can either get pleasure by running the idea on your internal neural
network or run it in cruel physical reality and get pain.

------
crusso
Some articles tell you to dream big. Some articles like this one tell you to
dream smaller and learn how to execute on your ideas.

The real problem is in understanding how to match the ambitiousness of your
ideas to the level at which you are able to execute. Everyone is different and
most people are better at one vs the other.

Difficulty in finding that sweet spot seems to be the real source of
difficulty that motivates blogs like the one being discussed in this thread.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
>The real problem is in understanding how to match the ambitiousness of your
ideas to the level at which you are able to execute.

Start small, build bigger and more ambitious over time. If you wanted to
become a runner, you wouldn't start with trying to run a marathon the first
time your feet hit the pavement.

------
sendos
_> You look like you're going to spend your life having one epiphany after
another, always thinking you've finally figured out whats holding you back and
how you can be productive and creative and finally turn your life around. But
nothing will ever change. That cycle of mediocrity is'nt due to some
obstacle.Its who you are._

This is precisely what I've realized about people and famous cliches like "you
can do anything you set your mind to". The problem is that it's not true for
most people. People's aspirations rarely match what their capabilities are.
They do match in the case of the few who succeed, and that's who we hear these
cliches from.

I wrote about this exact issue here [http://andrewoneverything.com/life-is-
exactly-what-you-make-...](http://andrewoneverything.com/life-is-exactly-what-
you-make-of-it-for-most) ("Life is exactly what you make of it - For most
people, this is a bad thing"). There's a poem at the end of the post that
exactly matches the sentiment I quote at the beginning of this post.

~~~
EREFUNDO
Yes but we rarely even know ourselves. We don't know our limits until we try
to reach it. We don't know how far we'll get until we take the journey. We
don't know if our ideas will work until we try it. You can only theorize about
an idea so much, at some point the time for theorizing is over and the time
for doing it begins. The trick is figuring out when that is. I think it
happens very early....

~~~
Jun8
"Our lives teach us who we are" Salman Rushdie.

On a more cynical tone: "Anything can happen in life, especially nothing."
Michel Houellebecq

------
firefoxman1
What kind of mind game is this comic playing on me (or am I just doing it to
myself)?

Reading the following part itself was an epiphany moment:

 _"...having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally
figured out whats holding you back and how you can be productive and
creative..."_

Because I saw myself in that. I thought "Holy crap that's
exactly...that's...so true...that's me! That's the problem!"

Then I thought "Damn it, the problem is that exact problem...Right now is just
another one of those epiphanies. I need to stop this."

Which led to the thought "But how would I have become aware and known that was
the problem if I _hadn't_ had this epiphany?"

So the ultimate question I have for myself is: "Will this epiphany be any
different? Maybe it actually can snap you out of the cycle."

So to ensure it isn't just another useless epiphany, I will tape this quote
from the comic to my wall: _"That cycle of mediocrity isn't due to some
obstacle. Its who you are."_

Thank you XKCD. You've woken me up.

~~~
mattmorgan
All the cycles end on the epiphany that cycles themselves don't exist. They
are just pieces of an internal storyline you've been writing since childhood.
The story is not optimized for your happiness, because you didn't even
architect it. Try reinventing a suitable story for yourself from scratch.

Go ahead and skip the accomplishment part. Skip right to giving yourself
success and happiness now. Time is the real resource at play here, so don't
deplete by screwing yourself out of happiness every day instrospecting through
these cycles. The only person that will/can give you what you want is you, and
you have direct access to make it happen without the gauntlet you are imposing
on yourself.

Or at least this is the direction I'd like to go...

~~~
nodemaker
I have been thinking about what you said!...thanks!

------
squozzer
Another lesson is to not rely on the opinion of the opposite gender (or the
same, if you prefer...not that there's anything wrong with that) for your
self-esteem.

Also, don't give too much weight to well-meaning writers who ask you to do
more and dream less.

After all, we're no more than little grubby organisms clinging to a dirty,
water-covered rock in a rather humdrum star system that sits on the edge of a
pretty ordinary galaxy. Against that backdrop, even the Apollo program is not
much better than your soon to be forgotten project.

~~~
pacemkr
Thinking like this helps me center.

Whenever I find myself down and my productivity low, I stop and think of how
insignificant all this is, on a cosmic scale. We're here, and then we're not.

You'd guess that this thinking would make you feel nihilistic: what is the
point of what I'm doing? Ironically, I only feel like that when thinking on a
human scale, of life, of what I want to accomplish, of how unattainable it all
seem in the moment. Then I step back, and I see that we are a spec in time and
all this self-doubt and torture is unnecessary. At the end of this game, there
are no winners. Enjoying the sport is your personal victory.

------
moonlighter
There are reasons why many many more people are 'dreamers and thinkers' and
have tons of ideas. Because it's easy. Executing those ideas is much harder
for most, as it entails actual effort, time, planning and most critically,
endurance. I know I had my fair share of TONS of ideas, MANY of them started
and very few actually finished.

------
mhartl
This seemed promising, but I stopped reading after the second "lol".

------
GS533
Awesome piece of writing. Really inspiring.

------
AerieC
Great article. It's inspired me to get back to work.

------
MortenK
Hackernews have just jumped the shark.

------
shingen
Am I the only one that judges HN stories on an 'I regret wasting my time on
this' scale?

As in:

Outcome A) working, take a break, visit HN, read linked post, regret wasting
my time on terrible blog post, immediately think: I should be working right
now, not reading about some supposed megalomaniac's personal problems.

Outcome B) working, take a break, visit HN, read linked post, judge my time
well spent learning something of value.

In some form or another I value appraise all HN stories by this scale.

When the guy started talking about getting his feelings hurt by a stranger's
nearly worthless opinion (why would you value a stranger's opinion so highly
Mr. Megalomaniac?), and then getting wasted accordingly, I knew I was in for a
real special read. When he followed that up by calling himself a megalomaniac,
I bailed. And it is thus that piece of junk goes in the 'I regret reading any
of this' category.

~~~
kappaknight
I agree. I was trying to pick out the wisdom in this post; I mean, the comic
was entertaining I guess. All I gathered was:

1\. I had an okay idea and did absolutely nothing about it for 18 months...
until I saw other people built what I was thinking.

GUYS, DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE I DID OF DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Seriously? That in itself is not a lesson worth 1,000 words.

~~~
bfrs
another tl; dr:

Edison: Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

