I have a terrible addiction to new ideas. Although I can occasionally achieve a state of flow in my corporate job, I can almost never achieve it in my free time. I’m constantly chasing the new idea dragon. When I look at the past year of output, it’s simply abysmal. All I have to show for it is a smattering of boring client work and the sad carcasses of a dozen abandoned ideas; domain names (over 300 now!), page after page of product sketches, brainstorming notes and pre-launch pages. Sometimes I rationalize it to myself thusly: “It’s okay, you’re learning from this constant generation of new ideas and product concepts. Eventually you’ll land on one that just clicks, and boy you’ll really execute then!” Except I don’t.
New ideas have the same effect on me as heroin does to an addict. The initial spike is euphoric, but the comedown is downright debilitating. As the effects wear off and the harsh realities of actually executing and iterating kick in, I move on to the next idea to get my fix.
Unless I radically change my habits, 2012 will produce another collection of corpses to throw in the idea cemetery. I really don’t want that to happen. I can’t let that happen. I turn 30 in four months which, to me, is really fucking scary. I read stuff like “it’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing” from Steve Jobs, and it has the uncomfortable effect of simultaneously depressing me and jolting me with a sense of panic. I’m turning 30 and I’ve produced no amazing art. Shit.
I’ve read that people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade. Maybe I need to internalize that better so that next year I’m not in a constant despair/panic cycle, while channeling that manic urgency into a laser beam instead of a wank into the wind. Instead of thinking “what will I achieve when I’m 30?” maybe I should be thinking, “what will I achieve in my 30s?” Maybe. But that won’t help me today.
Today I need to get serious. No, drastic. Like a heroin addict going to rehab. This is my intervention. No more new ideas, no more domain names, no more client work, no more hypotheticals, no more I’ll do it tomorrow, no more wasted time. ”By the way, what have you ever done that’s so great?” I’ll have to get back to you.
Dude…chill. I’m 31. I’m still younger than girls I slept with when I was 18. There’s nothing about this to be worried about.
You need to get smart. Buying domain names and setting up the next “what if” project isn’t a good way to go. You sound like you have no shortage of ideas, which means you’re already way out ahead of 99% of other people in this business and 99.999% of the general public. Just pick one or two projects you really like, and commit yourself to sticking with them for the next five years, come hell or high water. In the course of working at them, testing, launching and refining them, you’ll learn a lot more about yourself and about aspects of the business you might not have had hands-on experience with as a creator, rather than a manager. Even if they don’t work out, they won’t be a waste of time.
Art is a silly word. I went to art school and had endless show-trial debates about what it was. I dropped out and read a lot of Camus and Sartre. I became a professional musician, artist, designer and ultimately, webmonkey whore, while watching a few of my peers turn fashion hype into money by leveraging those three little letters, A-R-T. My conclusion? Art doesn’t exist. It’s a giant pile of bullshit. Even music doesn’t exist. There are ways of reaching people… they get hooked every time the writer talks to them like a friend. The rest is a zoo, right?
Your priority isn’t making art, it’s communicating. To make “art” you have to hang your self-worth on impressing people who buy it; it’s ultimately commercial. Whereas to communicate, all you have to do is say something (like this blog post) that someone else can relate to.
I can relate to this and I’m telling you — pick one and go. There’s a trade-off, you know, between depth and breadth of knowledge. You sound like you’ve spent the time to develop the wide, shallow pool…now devote yourself to diving in deep, and don’t be afraid of where you’ll be in 4-5 years. The deeper you go into a project you really care about, the more useful knowledge you’ll pick up along the way.
I am with you man. Try turning 42 going on 43 and I don’t have any kids. The reason I couldn’t meet you today is because I am doing a favor for a buddy and writing an iphone app for him and I thought I had to go through a bunch of docs but he has not sent me anything yet. When I was just over 30, I started a company and I made a bunch of money off it eventually but then I spent all my money on real estate that tanked. It has taken me this long to get back to starting a company again. I don’t know. Life is very strange and it is so short and if you miss an opportunity, sometimes it can take a while to rebound. There are not a lot of Steve Jobs out there. I don’t know what to say. Life sucks. It would be a lot cooler if we lived longer and stayed younger longer. It can always be better. But it can always be worse too and that is something to think about. At what point do you say ‘hey I am happy.’ You will never get everything you want no matter what and then once you do get it, sometimes you find that wasn’t really what you wanted in the first place or once you get it it is no longer making you happy because there are other things that you now want or it isn’t enough or whatever.
It’s hard. We’ve just got to stay positive and look forward. Look up and forward not back and down.
I don’t know what to say. Life sucks. It would be a lot cooler if we lived longer and stayed younger longer.
It seems like you were given a chance once and you didn’t take advantage of it. I’m not sure if a longer life and more youth would make it any better for you.
The key to life is LIVING it, not waiting for it to happen. You can make a choice to spend your entire life in front of a computer and/or being an entrepreneur but chances are that’s your decision.
Regret being 42 and not having kids? Do something about it. Say “no” to your budd and stop writing the iPhone app for him and do things that will further YOU in life.
That’s true. I was trying to say that you can look at the negatives of stuff and you can look at the positives of them but you can always look towards the negative and not appreciate what you have now. I should probably tell my buddy to forget the iphone app and just focus on the things that are going to make me happy. I don’t want to spend too much time on a computer and my life passes me by.
That’s true. I was trying to say that you can look at the negatives of stuff and you can look at the positives of them but you can always look towards the positive and not appreciate what you have now. I should probably tell my buddy to forget the iphone app and just focus on the things that are going to make me happy. I don’t want to spend too much time on a computer and my life passes me by.
Also you can’t spend too much time on a computer or it will drive you nuts!
I know the feeling, with the added bonus of a personal life that’s sort of a disaster.
I’ve saved some money and given notice at my job. The goal for the next couple years is to gain some health of mind and create at least one thing I’m actually proud of. I’ll fail and fast if the past is anything to go by, but the time is now if I’m going to make anything of myself.
From my own personal experience with that exact same scenario (almost literally, domains and all), I’d suggest it’s fear you’re suffering from.
I had to run into a harsh wall in life before it altered my trajectory, around the age of 28.
When I say fear, here’s what I mean: you’re afraid of what happens if you succeed. The nature of that can take a variety of forms. Some people are afraid of losing perceived independence (freedom to pursue a lot of things); some people are afraid of the demands that come with success (from customers or changes to your life); some people are afraid to fail in a big way, which is the risk of pursuing a business / product / idea all the way.
No matter how you look at it, it’s a form of self sabotage. There are two cures for it: change your habits and a lot of things about your life, use drastic confrontation to defeat the cycle; or, the more painful way, change through necessity due to a crash in your life.
In my experience, personal demons are best vanquished with fire. I hope you’re able to find your solution.
Oh, the problems of the young.
Look, kid, I’m 45, and I’m here to tell you thirty is too young for your midlife crisis. It’s good that you can look back and analyze, but for God’s sake, your life is anything but over.
Pick one of those ideas – it doesn’t even matter which one – and take it further, even just to whatever next stage you feel is “further”. Exercise that “further” muscle every week or two. Don’t go cold turkey on new ideas, you’ll just drive yourself crazy. But do start taking them further.
Drop me a line if you want to trade some – I’ll do a step and give it back. We can be addiction buddies.
But dude – don’t fall prey to the false notion that if you haven’t already succeeded, you’re not going to. Didn’t you see that article a couple of weeks back about Nobel prizes going to older people than they did in the 19th century? Your whole life is still right where it was – ahead of you.
Oh, one big piece of advice.
If you’re going to pursue an idea, a method that helped me avoid crippling or abandoning the concept before it could be brought to fruition, is to do it so damn fast my psychology barely had a chance to intervene and shut it down.
Build things you can launch in hours, days, or a week or two etc. The first product or two you get out the door before you kill them, will help you radically. With each launched site, product, whatever, the duration you can work on something without abandoning it for a new idea will expand.
Above all else, make it live. Once it’s alive and breathing on the web, and even a few people are using it, that product or site or whatever can keep living (assuming it doesn’t require 24/7 operation on your part and has some automation to it). There’s a thrill to creating something that people find amazing or useful and so on. That will keep your attention and draw you back to refine and add to the thing you’ve launched.
Look dude – we are all in the same boat. Even those who actually get to a point and create something “cool” will prob look at eventually and say they “want more” and move on.
Fuck everything else and do 2 things. First, learn to finish a project. I don’t give a shit if it is cleaning your toilet or making a mona lisa. Finish-the-job. And post it here.
Second, learn to be happy with what is around you. You can spend your whole like wanting a hotter chick, more and more money, a 150K car, blah blah – this list will go on forever. Learn to live in the moment and enjoy what is around you. If you go to lunch with someone take a second to look down at your food and think about how good it is. Then look at your friend and remember how lucky you are to have some to eat with.
I am not saying you are ungrateful – but it is a state of mind EVERY person on this planet has to come to in order to get some type of peace in their life.
One of the very few comments which I read from heart, gave motivation and what not. Thankyou for your life lesson.
Thankyou, sir. This made me think really hard about my own life, and I appreciate it.
Sean, you sound like me in many ways. You’re a cat person too, as I am, so that’s bonus points
I’d love to brainstorm with you sometime about your ideas. I have a lot to say myself, since I traveled down the road you’re now on. Just hit me up on my email.
I’ll give this advice however: diversify your knowledge, understand your own suffering, solve a problem you have, then share it with the world.
It’s essentially how I came to write Zero to Superhero: http://zerotosuperhero.com and create Rejection Therapy: http://rejectiontherapy.com
Gandhi had it right all along: You must be the change you want to see in the world.
I’m 31 and I just realized that IT isn’t for me and decided to learn C# and .NET framework to switch. And I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree that I would really want because I’m broke.
My point is, it’s never too late. I heard one day the saying “if I knew that I will live up to 70 I could learn violin at my 30′s and now I would be a violist with 40 years of experience”.
True story.
Oh man I feel your pain. I have moleskins going back around seven years filled with notes on ideas, product sketches, business plans, all about how I’m going to make an amazing web-based product and strike it big on my own.
I’ve recently been able to to hunker down on one of the ideas, but I’m constantly doubting it’s validity. The only thing that keeps me going is encouragement from my peers and an almost completely irrational belief in it’s success. I’m also framing it as a learning exercise.
After you finish the fun parts that you’re good at, the rest is hard work. It requires creative, strategic thinking in fields we developers don’t know much about. Faced with this, the lure of a fresh idea is almost too tempting. To actually power through the hard stuff takes sheer effort.
Still I have a look around this blog and I can’t find any links to your previous projects. Is that because they’re unfinished or just not on the net? I wouldn’t stop doing new projects because you feel like you can’t get them finished, and I wouldn’t devalue all that experience either. You’ve probably learned a hell of a lot from all those failed attempts. The next stage is identifying what tool you don’t have, why aren’t your projects getting finished?
If it is that other new ideas are too tempting, have you considered timeboxing yourself? For example, make yourself a promise that you’ll work on a project for a whole month before moving onto another idea. That way it’s time-bounded, but there’s enough time to make a significant dent in it. You also might want to set yourself a goal of actually launching something (seriously, it could be a dumb twitter client or a silly little todo app) so that you have something to show for it.
Either way, good luck! Your age seriously means nothing. The fact that you have the same burning desire to create something is important, and not as common as one would think.
re: “it’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing”
TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT. Steve Jobs was never an artist. He never created anything, in fact. He just took the credit. So fuck him
I’m reading Job’s biography. I have to say that this statement is one of his “reality distortion fields”. It’s amazing how much effect it has even for people who are just reading his words.
To OP, you got sucked into Job’s RDF, and it made you miserable. Sometimes it does great, other times it wrecks people, at least according to the book. The man is one heck of a con-artist/visionary, but one the tech world was fortunate to have. Please realize that and stop framing your self-worth from another man’s manipulation tactics put into writing.
The only thing that matters in this world is will. In the astronomical scheme of things, 30 years is just as insignificant as millions of years. If you can accept that whatever art you produce will be forgotten in the near future (ie., human race goes extinct), you would free yourself from these burdens. Even if you created the next facebook or something to rival the mona lisa and you became a celebrity and billionaire with god-like status IT WON’T FUCKING MATTER IN ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY.
TLDR OP got sucked into Steve Job’s RDF via a quote and concluded works of art last an eternity so he has to come with something asap
What will I achieve tomorrow
Why do you think you have to produce great art and that your being happy depends on achieving “success” as defined by corporate propaganda?
if you become too preoccupied with your standing relative to your peers your work will be shitty. relax and let it flow.
i think that steve jobs is not much of an artist himself and it is not helpful to measure accomplishment according to his metric. this is the guy who took all the knobs off of computers and devices.
Every day I find myself wishing I could finish my personal projects. Be it music (I could have been a musician, I should have been a musician) or software, it does not matter. At the end of the day, I can’t seem to get anything done.
Work takes most of my time, and in the weekends I don’t have the inspiration I need to actually get anything done. But I keep wanting to “create art”, the drive and desire to create don’t seem to go away despite the lack of results. I’m also exceptionally critic when I do get some.
It’s a catch 22. Ideas get you high, and then some strange mechanism cripples them, turns them to burdens you don’t really want to carry anymore.
It must be something about my past, or my upbringing. I don’t know. Sometimes it just feels excruciating.
Ze Frank did a skit on that — he called business ideas “brain crack”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24prm3XjVgk
The analogies seem quite fitting…
Your biggest challenge is… forming an opinion strong enough to motivate deliberate and sustained progress.
Key phrase… “forming an opinion”.
I know from experience, you have to be truly passionate about a particular opinion that drives you. An idea that sticks in your mind and makes you feel like you have to see it come to life in the world.
Any old idea won’t work, and expect it to take time and experience with a particular subject before you’ll be able to form strong opinions that you are confident about. This is where age actually benefits you, the more time you have doing something, the stronger your opinons tend to become. Get that experience and form that opinion.
You can read about my experience at http://redtagcrazy.com/blog/2011/03/28/rise-and-fall/
Something to consider:
Perhaps building a startup is not your “thing.”
Your calling. Your passion. The reason you are here.
I used to be a web developer, startup entrepreneur, etc.
Then I went through a phase where I realized that I was only in it for the money. My “dream” was to make a million bucks or two and go sit on a beach somewhere and play videogames. But my heart wasn’t in it.
I’m still struggling with finding my own calling, but now it is between being a writer, musician or social revolutionary. [or all 3]
Frankly speaking my Passion is also related to earn money at the end of the day but heck, its not wrong, specially when a family is dependent on you. You can’t play so much in the name of experiments.
It sounds like you understand your problem properly, and more or less know what to do about it. You need to go over all the projects and ideas you currently have, pick out The Project You’re Going To Execute On, and pursue that to the exclusion of all else (okay, maybe you can have one tech project and one art project, just to keep yourself a break once in a while, but that’s it). And execute. Keep working on it until either it succeeds or you conclusively show that it doesn’t have the potential you hoped.
I’d like to echo Bram’s comment, and note I love his final sentence; it’s not a win or fail in entrepreneurship, it’s a win, or a modify/improve to win.
But you’re on the edge of determining the ideal outcome for yourself, you just need to clearly define your goal, and then what you need to get there. If your goal is to make one of your ideas come to life, the only tough part left for you is picking one. If instead you’re not picking one, but are instead coming up with new ideas, all you have to remember is that you’re making that decision.
Also, I’m using this space to give this advice to myself, as it’s a lesson I need to hear.
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Hey dude, I don’t know if this helps or not but it has helped me a ton. If you make the project based on what you want, instead of what you think other people want you might find yourself a lot more stoked throughout. I have the opposite problem as you btw. I’ve been working on the same idea since 2nd grade… but if we are consistent then all will be stoked, hehe.
Thanks for this post. My birthday is April 20th, and I will also be turning 30, just like you. Have you read any Seth Godin? His book Linchpin is excellent, and it talks about the very situation that you are going through.
GoDaddy loves me because I have purchased 97 domains from them, but two of them help me to solve problems that I care about. I am letting all of the other ones lapse, and I am focusing. Over the past 2 years, I have allowed this one idea to evolve, and I have found a community of people who also care about the problem; together we a moving forward on the project. They keep me on my toes, hold me accountable, and they pick me up when I am down.
I would start with a problem. Write out a list of problems that you see in the world, in your realm, in your community, and start brainstorming some solutions. Think about the areas in which you have expert knowledge. Grab one of those ideas that has promise, find a team of people to work with you, and weave your passion into a project that is remarkable, something that will help solve a big problem, something that you care about.
It could be that you’re going at it alone. Creativity and art is enhanced by a partner, or a team.
I can’t wait to see what you come up with. If you want to bounce ideas off of somebody, I love the entrepreneurial mindset, and I love taking ideas and pushing them into reality.
Thanks for sharing!
excellent response from josh strike – dead on.
Read “The War Of Art” and “Do The Work” (recommend the latter first) by Steven Pressfield. Do it, now!
Just to let you know Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Didn’t start the company until he was 30.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
So don’t sweat it. Just pick an idea and go!
Not often that you read a page full of blog comments and find that every one is decent and insightful. Great post, great comments.
I wonder how amazing a company staffed by everyone who has posted here could be.
I have this same exact same problem and I have the same feeling you do , and I’m not even 21 yet (I’m 20). As a student in college in both the business & computer science departments, I see too many of my classmates competing like crazy, working on cool projects in their spare time, and I definitely wish I acted more instead of just thought / idea-sketched all the time.
I think the key for creative people like us is to definitely just pick one or two and focus lots of time attacking them, exhausting all approaches, etc. And then move onto the next one.
Otherwise, my list in Evernote of ideas / hacks / projects I want to work on just keeps growing bigger and bigger ><
Same here…
“ I’m turning 25 and I’ve produced no amazing art. Shit.“
Dr. Seuss wrote his iconic “The Cat in the Hat” at age 50.
It is good to have a sense of urgency, but not futility.
Dude. Shut up and go for a walk.
Remember this message to you when you turn 50…
I’m a year and half younger than you but in the same boat. Even though my career looked to zoom from late teens to early 20s, where I worked on a bunch of interesting ideas, worked at great companies and get awarded for it, things have started to slow down. I have worked on a lot of interesting ideas and running my startup, but I have come to slowly accept the reality that I might not be able to make a big idea before 30.
But, my philosophy is that if you keep doing good work, someday before you realize that we are on to something great. And this can happen so suddenly. Think of the Angry bird or Twitter’s creators. Or think of legends like Gandhi or Churchill. They worked hard on so many ideas for years or decades before success & fame hit unexpectedly. And success can be so sudden that in 2 years go can zoom to the top if you had the right stuff. So, if my right opening comes at even 35, I can still achieve great success before 40. Assuming I live to 70, I have a lot of time to then expand and give value. Steve Jobs started almost from ground zero in his 2nd comeback and built a powerful empire.
So, in summary it is not when you get the break. It is about how much can you build on that. And that break can come anytime if we constantly build good stuff. Also, we should keep preparing ourselves on how to reconize the break, how to utilize to full extend and how not to take it to the head. If we do this that is success.
Plain and simple find a good partner, sometimes you want to quit, then your partner will help you to keep going and vice versa. When your alone u just quit and no one keeps you back in the game. Also, be in a good city like the bay area, maybe u dont have the right things around u to push it forward.
Damn good post. I feel you having spent some time working on various projects with you. Problem is the idea is the fun part. Then there is a long period of two or three months or longer grinding away when you would rather be playing music or something rather than wrangling with HTML or CSS. When you finally launch something, and see people using it then I think you will feel that rush again. But its hard to push through. Especially, when you have a steady job that pays good money. That’s why quitting your job greatly increases the chances of success. Its not the time as much as the fear of going or staying broke that will light a fire under you. Jobs was successful because he took big risks like that. Quitting Atari to form Apple.
I doubt I will take chance like that because I am relatively comfortable doing what I am doing. So I will continue to do projects on the side hoping one of them succeeds.
Good article to read…..
First… go to your local Kmart and go pay off some people’s lay aways – you’re in the land of high-class problems.
Next… you may want to look into patenting and learning how to file provisional patents – in 2004 I had the same sort of ideas all over the place, the difference is that each one became a patent application. The project may not flourish, but the idea embodied as a patent just might… go to http://telicash.com, click on an image and take a look at one of my patents.
Now, I’ve recently paused and am going back over all the unfinished projects (really)… and taking another look. Even in a year technology changes, you changes, the world changes… and what may have gotten stuck before may be plausible now. You have idea inventory – review, review, review.
Finally, no way this idea shit compares to being a junkie. Really. Ups and downs, sure… that’s not somewhere you wanna go, or at least stay in if you’re visiting. A nice alternative that I discovered is Zhineng Qigong – chinese moving meditiation – I get to empty the garbage can of ideas that is my head on a daily basis… strengthens the immune system, focuses the mind, it’s really cool (and it’s *slower* than tai-chi!)…
Good luck brother, and enjoy the trip!
I couldn’t agree more. You’ve articulated my own experience. The rush of working out that new idea is intoxicating. At that moment the idea has no downside and no limits.
Please stop. Stop the fear, stop the planning.
I met Nobel prices, the British writer of one(if not THE bestseller) of the world bestsellers novel for kids, people from startups that became big… all of them have one thing in common: It was not a bed of roses, in fact getting their idea to work was a continuum pain in the ass.
Before getting there(when they need the help) all the people around will oppose them(as they tried to change the status quo), after it(when they don’t need it anymore) all the people around will support them.
What I try to tell you is that it was not “the idea”, it was so much effort on their part what got them there, and very risky(some of the bet all what they had).
Imagine what was for Colombus to risk their life on what is today smaller than a fish boat(but made of wood instead of steel and much more people on the same space), or remember that Gutenberg spent all their life creating the printing press(his students will make it public once he was dead).
Don’t try to emulate them unless you know what you do. You don’t need to become them.
What you are telling us is that your mind does have a threshold you can’t surpass on risk and work(and boring stuff), so you start new ideas that have at first a low threshold until it grows. That is normal and totally fine, if nobody has made that before is not because there are not thousands of people in the world as capable as you are, but because nobody wanted to decide(decide means cutting branches, cutting options)for doing what it takes to ship your idea(ideas are never “finished”, there is always room for improvement).
An amazing Post, with a lot of interesting comments.
I learned something reading this page, thanks !
Andy Cavallini
Italy
Lots of opinions and advice here already. Some of it is good, but I felt strongly compelled to post a dissenting view based on my practical experience as both an “ideas guy” and as a successful founder of several companies.
It’s true that ideas are worthless without execution, but I get bent out of shape every time someone spouts this mantra because it’s only half of the story. A bad idea well executed is still a bad idea. You can waste a huge amount of time, money and energy throwing your passion into a bad idea.
Some of the most toxic advice is that you should just “pick one or two of your ideas and turn the volume up to 11 on them for a few years, no matter what!” aka “just start, you can always pivot”. That’s totally bullshit in the real world. Reputations get tarnished, and every opportunity you take costs all of the other opportunities you didn’t take.
Now, that also doesn’t mean that you should curl up in the fetal position and hope the world stops asking hard questions. It’s possible that one of your ideas is the next Facebook, but the realistic truth is that statistically you will never dream up the next Facebook.
And that’s okay. In fact, it’s great. You can start forgiving yourself now.
My feeling is that it’s perfectly fine to be addicted to having ideas and suppressing your excitement long enough to analyze the ideas for flaws. This isn’t time wasted not executing, it’s time invested in two valuable activities: practising the skill of spotting deadly flaws and rolling the dice on another idea. This is a much more pragmatic opportunity cost than believing that the world is counting on you to deliver the next major cultural wave, and soon.
Let’s say that you realize none of your ideas (so far) are the next WWW or automobile. Nobody is going to be disappointed in you for teaming up with another person to build their idea. Insisting on building your own idea to feel validated is like refusing to adopt kids with a different skin color — it doesn’t hold up to unbiased scrutiny. So my advice is that you should stop beating yourself up and be open to opportunities that originate amongst your self-selected, startup-inclined friends.
haha, when I turned 30 I was a REAL heroin addict. Took me until 35 to blow all my money and go into real reahab. And took until at least 40 until I got most of my confidence back. I studied a book called “The Secret” and have created a string of awesome art I’m extremely proud of, and actually got paid to boot. Some people like to discard those airy fairy self-help books, but I swear to GOD I’d be dead without them. I never even went to art school… I did mechnical engineering. What I learned and applied from those books allowed me to so some pretty awesome shit including a big cash prize from a big vodka company.
I advise you to read Abraham-Hicks and Daryl Anka (bashar). Apply the ideas like a scientist and you’ll soon see what I mean.
Jose states an important point. Many people want to be successful but lack the will and focus to stay on one path for a long time. It is really a misleading perception that people get successful overnight, because it makes people believe that only the idea has to be the right one and immediate success is guaranteed. This is far from true. Successful people almost always have been on ONE path for a couple of years.
Because if you focus on a limited set of problems for a long time, you give yourself the opportunity to generate really cool ideas and to be really creative. Don’t underestimate the unconscious aspect of creativity. But these processes are very inertial. If you dont stay on a limited set of topics for a while, you do not give yourself enough time to get to the level of insight that is needed for great new ideas.
Take two projects you always wanted to do and have a good “gut feeling” about and dedicate yourself to them for a year. If this wont result in successful projects, it will however definitely bring you to a next level in life and in your career.
Just a thought, but I works out for me so far.
Dude, with 300 domains, i would put up some SEO sites and fucking chill while money is comming in.
Thanks for the post, thanks for the comments. I discussed a similar topic with some of my friends, and felt like I was the only one thinking I’m wasting my time. Not getting something cool (not necessarily big or bringing ton of money) done, while there are so much dudes who made their first hit when they where younger than me.
Now I see I’m not the only one, and got a nice bunch of points of view and advice !
Don’t freak out about turning 30, just look at average life expectancies in developed countries and how they have been constantly rising – you will likely have a LOT more time to do anything you set your mind to.
What you might be feeling now is rather well described on wikipedia as “saturn return”. Bare with me, I don’t care about astrology and only got that term from a song but it boils down to what you could be feeling and a bit of self-searching should also tell you where these feelings come from. Good luck!
I think this is the first blog post where I’ve read every comment. It’s like a mini intervention for all of us, not just the OP.
You’re immensely talented and you are taking something away from every critical thought exercise you go through (no matter how brief). I’d bet you are closer than you think to the idea that you’ll feel compelled to foster.
Invert, always invert. Where do you want to be in 10 years? Why do you want to be there? How will you get there? Be specific. Work backwards from there.
Start applying to incubators with your best ideas. Impulsively taking one step down several paths is too easy to bail on. If you find a co-founder and get into an incubator, that first step is like getting on a train. You just can’t get off for a while and by the time the 3 months is over, you’ll be deep in your new “job”, you’ll have commitments and maybe you’ll actually finish something you’ll be proud of for the rest of your life.
Get on the train!
I didn’t do any big projects until I was 36 and spent a year drawing a tarot deck.
Change the length of your attention. Look at all your ideas. Which ones do you keep coming back to? Which ones really mean something to you? Which ones will be FUN to work on beyond the basic pleasure of exercising your skills? Maybe one from the trunk will present itself as What Must Be Done. Maybe a new one will come up.
Make yourself ready to work on something you know you can’t get done in a week. What project is the size of a year? Do it, and do it to your best. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t.
Frank Herbert was about 40 when he wrote Dune. You’ve got time.
I like what the Johns said about Fear (Dec 17th 11:44) and doing things lightning fast (Dec 17th 11:51).
Something I’ll add from personal experience is to stop writing things down. I used to write down, brainstorm and sketch out every idea I had. What I realised was that ended up taking up a chunk of time and energy for something I was never going to execute.
After the realisation I stopped writing it all down. Instead I would just hold it in the background allowing it to fade out. The outcome was that good ideas would stick around,ideas that I wasn’t really interested in or that weren’t very good would disappear.
It made it a lot easier to decide which ideas were worth executing and removed the addiction.
Hey man,
How about putting a website about all your ideas and work you have
done and pass the baton to others who find interesting
enough to take them to next level. You may not get millions for that but atleast some satisfaction to see your ideas on next level.
Another thought is , if you feel you have lost 5 years of doing nothing, you change your life style, eat healthy, exercise daily
and you may increase your working life for 5 more years.
People says time doesn’t come back, but you can definitely increase it.
Drop me a mail if you find it interesting enough to pursue.
What is your daily caffeine intake? Just curious. I had the same “idea addiction” and found limiting myself to 2 espresso shots per morning sustained the inspiration, but allowed for more focus on execution.
Great post and comments! I read every comment and I feel here some kind of huge entrepreneurial spirit floating
It’s great to see that there are so many people living the same way.
Greetings from Finland
[...] of considering what else should be done. If you still find yourself addicted to new ideas, read this. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); [...]
Ignore “amazing”. Start small, ship *something*, make shipping your habit. You can throw “amazing” and “remarkable” into the mix later. I’d say pick an idea you can execute in a month worth of time and ship it. It doesn’t have to be The Big Thing.
Since you’re comparing to a drug rehab I’d say this would be the detox. Good luck!
If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child.
[...] http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ngv50/why_have_cpus_been_limited_in_frequency_to_around/ http://spking.com/2011/12/17/intervention/ [...]
great point josh. People need to stop trying to get rich off of a “cool idea” or produce something that others may think is cool. INSTEAD more people need to find something they have a real belief and passion in and pursue that no matter what.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
A couple of things to consider:
A) what you consider to be boring others probably find fascinating. Even this post in itself is a small victory in that you have a lot of people talking. A lot of people hope to even have one successful blog post and never do.
B) if you want to use the term “artist” you should understand that art != business. Art can be anything, really. I believe you are interpreting it as accomplishment. I’m 38 and though I have the same exact story that you do, I have also spent time “diversifying” my success. I took up running and triathlons and went from couch potato to Ironman finisher in 22 months. Sure, maybe I’ve slacked off a bit learning new work skills but I’ve learned a hell of a lot about living a healthy life which leaves me much more time to work/create.
C) You’re not getting old. The more people live in the past and future the less they live for today. If you want to compare yourself to others you can always find people that have done much more than you have as well as other people that would die to be in your shoes. My bet is that the people that have done much more than you are “celebrities” and the people that admire what you’re doing are people you actually know. Keep it in context.
Keep moving forward, at least you haven’t lost the one of the main driving forces behind Steve Jobs, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”.
One of the best ways I’ve heard it explained is everyone gets on the treadmill. You get fitter on the treadmill, don’t feel bad about being there embrace it.
Instead of getting an idea and registering domains/making launch plans, what is it you really should be doing to prove your idea?
Awesome writing style!
Wow. We are in the same boat. I’m 22, and bursting with half-formed ideas. I also get a rush from thinking about new ideas, but it’s so hard to push them to completion when the rush has disappeared…
It was great to get one of my little side-projects featured in a couple of blogs. But bugs keep popping up, there are features to build that I’m not really excited about, and I know I need redo the design.. Pretty soon, my fun little idea just turned into a sense of dread.
I just watched 4 unused domain names expire this year. I wasted $40 on ideas that never got off the ground. I guess I figured that buying the domain name would give me a good incentive to start working on the project… That just doesn’t work.
I’ve also learnt that it’s important to build something I would actually want to use myself, because maintenance is a bitch when you’re bored of the idea.
Thanks for bringing out all of these thoughts! Take care, and I hope you find your golden idea soon
Get Scott Belsky’s book “Making ideas happen.”
It’ll change your life, promise.
Hugely worthwhile for focusing on ideas, and figuring out which ones are worth doing, and which ones should be ignored.
rb
I imagine a person living next door with excellent focus, but lacking ideas and inspiration. She’s wondering if all this yapping about great teams by combining people with complimentary skills does really work.
Maybe instead of hoarding all your ideas and wishing to execute them alone start talking about them. Find some startupers, buy them some beer and test the ideas on them. Maybe a business partner could keep you on track?
…and if you feel strong resistance to sharing your ideas, I’d recommend reading: Stuff – Compulsive Hoarding and Meaning of Things. Not specifically about idea hoarding but I found it relevant. Descriptions of resistance and then pain a hoarder feels when confronted with “stuff” being taken away closely resembled what I’ve felt when sharing my business ideas. Even those I decided I won’t execute.
By the time Alexander the Great was my age he had been dead 5 years.
I’m surprised no-one has mentioned this:
Harvard Business Review: How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen
http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1
[...] Builders Take a Moment to Finish Something I read this recent post about the author Turning 30 and has never created amazing art. He hasn’t created anything he is particularly excited about, but has over 30 domain names [...]