Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 47 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority
— From REWORK: Change the way you work forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
We’ve all been there: we have a lightbulb moment with what seems to be a fantastic idea, and we feel such a rush that we want to stop everything and focus solely on bringing our idea to life.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, authors of Rework, say, “By all means, have as many great ideas as you can. Get excited about them. Just don’t act in the heat of the moment.”
Why not?
“The enthusiasm you have for an idea is not an accurate indicator of its true worth. What seems like a sure-fire hit right now often gets downgraded to just a ‘nice to have’ by morning… and [it] isn’t worth putting everything else on hold. […] So let your latest grand ideas cool off for a while first.”
The authors suggest writing down the ideas and coming back to them a few days later, when we can evaluate them with a calm, cool mind.
Seth Godin, marketing guru, wrote in his blog, “Someone asked me where I get all my good ideas, explaining that it takes him a month or two to come up with one and I seem to have more than that. I asked him how many bad ideas he has every month. He paused and said, ‘none.’ And there, you see, is the problem.” (Source) “Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them.” (Source) And in his book Linchpin, Godin writes, “All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame and even dangerously bad ideas.”
Fried and Hansson make a very good point. And when combined with Godin’s, that enthusiasm should fuel us to keep coming up with ideas, without regard for whether they are good or bad. Once we write them down and examine them later, we can prioritize the ones that truly have merit.
To sum up, don’t be afraid to have bad ideas. Just don’t act on them when they first arrive, because at that moment they seem fantastic. Keep your enthusiasm for producing more and more ideas: the more bad ideas you have, the better your good ideas will be.
Happy ideating!
ACTION
TODAY: Stuck on something and at a loss for ideas? (Remember there’s no such thing as a shortage of ideas.) How about trying deliberately to come up with 3 horrible and terrible ideas? Once you’ve picked yourself up from the floor and stopped laughing, then you’ll be able to come up with a more sensible list to help you out on whatever you are trying to do. That list will still have many bad ideas, but simply look for the good ones as you separate wheat from chaff.
FUTURE: Make a list of as-many-ideas-as-you-can-come-up-with to help you out on whatever you are stuck. Park it somewhere for a day or two, and then come back to sift through the ideas. The benefit of letting the ideas sit for a period of time is that your mind will also be clearer on what you need. Then you can start evaluating the merits and worthiness of each idea you had, and after that you can start to implement the very best.
Know someone who needs ideas? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!