The Question
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
“Dude, brilliant idea… what if we ____<insert bad idea>____?”
This is the sound of one not-so-brilliant person pitching their friend an idea that is not brilliant.
This happens all the time.
I do this all the time.
I love pitching ideas.
We have lots of ideas and most of them never materialize into anything.
But why?
And more importantly, what is it about the ideas that do materialize that make them stick?
What determines if an idea lives or dies?
If we can determine the answer to this question, we can come up with a framework to apply when we really want an idea to stick.
To make this more real for you, look back at your own life.
Think of something that you or your group of friends made come to life. An idea you executed on.
Maybe it was a trip somewhere.
A business idea.
A piece of art.
A song.
Now think of all the other times you thought about making something happen.
That time you “almost went to Europe with your friends”
That time you “thought about getting into running”
That time you “almost started a blog”
That time you “almost made a band with your friends”
That time you “almost threw an awesome Christmas party at your house”
Now compare the things you executed on and the things you didn’t.
And look for patterns. Do you see any?
What is it about the ideas that you followed executed on, that make them worth pursuing?
And what is it about ideas that died, that didn’t make them worth pursuing?
My Half-Baked Answer
I have reflected back on some ideas that I have executed on and some that I haven’t.
What’s funny is that I don’t feel like the ideas that I have executed on have necessarily been my best ideas, so I’m ruling out “quality of idea” as a determining factor for what kills our ideas.
When looking back at the things I didn’t pursue, the biggest thing that has stopped me is getting over my own self-doubt.
When an idea hits, it’s magic. But after the initial inspiration wears off, my inner voice will begin it’s regularly scheduled programming.
It will tell me it’s not a good idea, or it’s too much effort, or that people will make fun of me for it, or that it’s not even possible.
So how did some ideas get past that inner voice?
I’ve come up with three possible answers.
Momentum
A forcing function
Wins even if you lose
Momentum
All ideas start off the same way.
A spark of inspiration.
A beautiful moment of clarity.
You can see your idea clear as day, and it’s brilliant.
This is when you start to tell people around you, maybe even write it in your journal.
But then what?
You might continue to think about it for a day or two, but eventually, it fizzles.
That’s the problem with sparks of inspiration, they are just a spark, not a fire.
This is where momentum comes into play.
In order to keep the fire alive, your spark of inspiration has to light something substantial on fire, and it has to happen quickly, before the dreaded fizzle.
I’ve noticed that on the ideas I’ve pursued, I have usually found momentum quickly.
For example, I had this idea to make hats that said “Make Video Horizontal Again” and sell them to filmmakers.
Not my best idea, but not my worst. For whatever reason, I ended up pursuing this idea.
I’ve had 100s of product ideas over the years that never materialized into anything. So why did this one?
In a word: momentum.
Instead of sitting on this spark of inspiration, I used it to light something a little more substantial.
I created a mock-up of the hat and sent it to my filmmaker buddies and posted it on my Instagram story. I did this in under an hour. I was racing hard against the “fizzle clock.”
And then I forgot about the idea.
Until the next day.
I checked my Instagram and saw that a bunch of people had commented on the hat.
They thought it was funny.
This reaction gave me the confidence to take another small step.
I made a sample of the hat.
And I purposely did it as quickly as I could, because I knew that this idea was fragile and could fizzle out at any moment.
It took me 1 hour to find a website that could make my hat real.
One week and $23 later I had a real hat.
The more steps you take towards making your idea real, the greater the likelihood that it will actually become real.
Conversely, the longer you go without taking any action on the idea, the less likely it will ever become real.
Naval explains a similar idea in this tweet:
Fast forward 3 months and I’ve now sold 336 of these hats online (subtle flex).
But before you go asking me for money, just know I’ve barely made any profit on them. But that’s beside the point.
Speaking of the point. Here’s the point.
Because I was able to find momentum early on with this idea, that give me the courage, confidence, drive, whatever you want to call it, to keep moving forward and keep taking small steps.
And small steps are how you go about accomplishing big goals.
So the lesson here is, if you are looking to pursue an idea, try to find a way to get momentum ASAP!
Set a “fizzle clock” for 24 hours and just know that if the clock strikes 0 and you haven’t made any moves on the idea, it is likely dead.
A Forcing Function
It is so easy to do nothing.
Like soooo easy.
And god does it feel good.
To just sit around and watch Netflix.
Tucked in to a comfy blanket.
Eating Doritos (the purple flavor of course).
To just keep doing your normal day-to-day life. Following the same routine.
And when you have a new idea you want to pursue, it is competing against the comfort of doing nothing.
And as we’ve stated, doing nothing can be pretty awesome.
So why do we do anything if doing nothing is so great?
Let’s take school, for example.
Remember studying.
Remember how much it sucked.
To sit in your room and stare at a textbook.
But we still did it.
Why?
Because we had to! Or at least that’s what we thought.
There’s a big test tomorrow and we don’t want to fail.
Why don’t we want to fail?
Because we might get labeled as stupid which would hurt us socially or we might not get accepted into college which we’ve been told is our one way to find a job and be able to support a family one day.
In short, there was a forcing function in our heads that drove us to study. We didn’t even feel like we were choosing to, we were forced to!
Now let’s step back for a second.
First off, the forcing function wasn’t real.
We didn’t have to study. We would have been fine if we failed that class.
But the illusion of the forcing function is what made it effective.
We can use this to our advantage.
If you want to execute on an idea, put yourself inside of a forcing function.
Here are some examples:
If you want to start a side hustle, tell everybody that you are doing it. Now there will be tremendous social pressure to actually follow through with it
If you want to learn a new skill, pay big money for a course on that skill. Now you are in a forcing function because you don’t want to waste all that money you just paid
If you want to pick up running, sign up for a race that is 6 months out. This one is two-fold. You paid money for the race and you also know that you need to be in proper physical shape for it otherwise you could injure yourself or worse, not even finish.
These forcing functions give us the illusion that we have no choice (even though, in reality, we still have the choice).
I’ve noticed that some of the things I’ve executed on have been because there was a forcing function.
When we did the Turtle Neck Guys thing, it was really only because we promised our friend that worked at Red Bull that we would enter and be one of his teams.
If we hadn’t promised that, who knows if we would have actually followed through with it.
So the lesson here is that if you put yourself inside of a forcing function, there is an increased likelihood that you will actually follow through with an idea.
Wins Even if You Lose
This concept is a super effective way to help you get over your own self-doubt.
Here’s the idea.
If you are contemplating trying something new out and you really want to go for it but the idea seems almost too big or too unlikely to succeed that it is scaring you, try this.
Think of all the things that you will gain, even if it doesn’t work out, just by attempting to do the thing.
For instance, if you want to start a business but you feel like it’ll fail, just think about how many skills you will pick up from attempting to run a business.
You want to start a blog, but you are worried nobody will read, just think about how much better of a writer you will become, even if nobody reads.
Focusing your time and attention on all these little wins helps you overcome the fear of it not working because even if it doesn’t work, you will pick up so many new skills and learnings along the way that will make it worthwhile.
Wrap Up
So there are my half-baked thoughts on this topic.
I really just wanted to force myself to put out a piece because I have not been hitting my New Year’s goal of 1 blog per week (bad).
So here’s to trying!
Please write me back with your thoughts on this, if you’ve got any!
Until next time,
Flickman
P.S. I need you to share this blog with one person. Somebody who likes to think about this type of stuff. Thank you