Ask HN: How do you find ideas?

2 points·nbbaier··7 comments

I'm in a bit of an idea slump - I want to start a project, but I don't know what to do. When you're facing that, what do you do?

Bonus for unhinged strategies!

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Usually I just try to become a conduit for the universe to work through. You know, a vessel for every muse to pour its sweetest nectar into, such that my resulting work is on par with divinity.

That, or I steal something off product hunt.

> Usually I just try to become a conduit for the universe to work through. You know, a vessel for every muse to pour its sweetest nectar into, such that my resulting work is on par with divinity.

Damn this is what I was missing!

I'm fortunate to work as a contractor in lots of organizations. What works for me is to keep an eye open for things that appear to be awkward, slow, annoying. I then ask people how do they find the situation and what reasons do they know of it being that way. Of course, many problems I discover aren't interesting to me. But every now and then I find something that intrigues me and I then go about it as a focused project. This process works better in smaller firms and orgs.

If you have a F/T job, then you could follow non-tech hobbies, volunteer or even just chat to random people at you local bar or club.

In my experience, lots of problems don't need lots of (or even any) technology to solve.

I create things that I need. Turns out other people need them too. IMO there is no better way to create something than to be your own customer and dogfood your project.

https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

PG wrote that essay in 2012. Since then the scratch your itch problems have lead to numerous tools, frameworks, etc. I think there are more fruitful opportunities to notice outside of the tech bubble.

Just ask people, anyone really, what they think the world could use more of.

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