My adventures in cheap and expensive ideas, and why this is changing | Hacker News Reader

My adventures in cheap and expensive ideas, and why this is changing

craigburgess.substack.com

39 pointsvitabenes22 comments

There’s something between having random ideas (easy) and implementing ideas (hard, but learnable) that I find very difficult: the ability to pick a promising idea — which includes having the confidence to stick to it. I don’t think that’s entirely captured by the word “executing”, and I think it’s also vital.

This is a case where practice improves results. Most of the ideas you pursue will be unsuccessful, but should have interesting results and learning experiences that you can apply to the next ideas. The worst thing you can do in that case is wait to come up with the best idea, it’s a hill that you need to start climbing by grinding through ideas even if they have lots of problems.

> you need to start climbing by grinding through ideas even if they have lots of problems.

The best ideas typically have a lot of problems (if it didn't, someone else would have ran with it before you).

The secret to picking "the right" idea to work on, in my opinion, is picking an idea that 1) is hard and has lots of problems, and 2) your background, skills, and experience give you a unique ability to solve those problems.

Knowing that you're working on a problem that you're uniquely poised to solve can give you the grit / confidence needed to see the idea through.

Aww, someone had a cool comment about only having a good idea after the project was over and it was too late, but when I tried to reply, the comment had been deleted.

Here was my response anyway. The question was how to get better at generating ideas when they're actually relevant instead of after the fact:

I wonder if it would help to taking a deliberate break in the middle of all the action, in order to give some space for your subconscious to bring relevant ideas to the surface.

I guess a short break might not be long enough and a long break might be hard to justify. It reminds me of the discussion yesterday about slack.

Also this is another reason why "the worst place to stop is a good stopping place" - if you wrap everything up before you stop, you don't leave your mind any loose ends to ponder.

Bah another one of these.

Sure, the vast majority of 'ideas' are cheap, as they are too vague, or not very original, unique, pertinent, practical, whatever. Just like most diamonds, perhaps.

But once in a while a really good, novel, pertinent idea will appear, and that is actually valuable. Of course it does have to be reified to deliver that value, but a lot of the value is in the idea itself, not just the execution.

This 'ideas are cheap, execution is expensive' narrative often comes from VCs etc, and you only have to follow the money to understand why.

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