The problem with having great ideas

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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-... ("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.

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.

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.

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.