Ideas are worth... a lot actually!

We all have heard the phrase “Ideas are worth a dime a dozen”, but I’d like to think that ideas are actually worth a lot, good ideas that is. But how do we know which ideas are good and which ones are bad? the truth is, we can’t.

It would be impossible to execute on each idea that comes to mind, but talking about your ideas with other people might help you pick which ones to follow and which ones to ditch or save for later. Remember to take other people’s opinions about your idea with a grain of salt, people tend to see uncommon ideas as bad ideas but in reality innovation usually is the result of thinking different and the willingness to take risks… in other words, some of the best ideas are seemed as either bad or crazy ideas by most people.

There are organizations such as TED which promote innovation by allowing people to talk about ideas “worth spreading”, what ideas are those? who decides which ideas are actually worth sharing? that is my point, no one really knows what a good idea looks like in the beginning, there is no pattern other than the fact that some of the greatest innovations in history started with ideas that didn’t seem good or popular.

Was Netflix a good idea back when it started? how about Twitter? do not judge other people’s ideas or your own, it is really easy to criticize but really hard to come up and follow-up on ideas, just try it. Jason Cohen from asmartbear.com wrote a great post giving out some examples on how easy it is to criticize when listening to other people’s ideas…

Ideas vs. Execution

Execution of ideas is what really counts right? while being able to execute ideas is obviously very important, so it is to have ideas to be executed. Both ideas and the ability to execute are necessary to achieve success on anything that you do. It is all about JFDI (Just Fucking Do It), so the next time you have an idea, don’t waste time trying to figure out if it is good or bad, or if it makes sense… just do what you need to do to make your idea a reality, you will more likely end up making a lot of changes to your original idea along the way and that is OK.

People say ideas are worth a dime a dozen because they usually see people (or themselves) coming up with ideas and never really doing anything about their ideas but talk about them. Talking about your ideas is good, but you do need to start doing something that moves your idea forward, do not fall into the trap of waiting for the “right” idea because those right ideas are made over time, after working on and making changes to an idea that probably didn’t seem as the right idea in the beginning.

Excuses are easy

Excuses are just like ideas, we come up with lots of them all the time. The difference is that we don’t have a problem coming up with excuses, we rarely doubt our excuses, it is easier to choose an excuse than it is to go against the current, moving forward with your bad or crazy idea.

It doesn’t mater what excuses you come up with, they are usually just very easy to come up with and most people like easy. Here are some of the excuses I’ve come up with myself and others I have heard from other people:

• I have a family
• I don’t have money
• I don’t have time
• My idea sucks
• I don’t know anyone that can help me
• I am too old, too short, too tall, too fat, etc…
• I don’t know how to sell
• This is not the right time
• I don’t know how to begin
• My language skills aren’t good enough
• I live in the wrong city
• I cannot move to another city
• I don’t have technical skills
• I don’t have business needs
• My idea isn’t ready yet
• It is not the right time of the year
• It is too risky
• It is too hard
• People will make fun or think I am crazy
• I don’t have a business model
• The country where I live does not offer opportunities
• etc…

I am sure you can come up with many more excuses that either you or someone you know have used in the past, these excuses prevent us from following our ideas, our dreams, and on top of all of these excuses there is also the fear of rejection, the fear of fail, we as humans do not like to be put on the spot or be rejected, we care too much about what the others think of us.

JFDI

Why not? if your idea is bad then at least you’ll be able to find out about it and hopefully will be able to modify your idea and push it forward. If you don’t try it at all then the problem is that you’ll never know if your idea was good or bad… how will you know if you don’t try it? I believe that in life everything has consequences, if you don’t do anything then there will still be consequences and they will likely be bad, and that is the worst you can do, do nothing. If you always keep doing things, you’ll come up with bad ideas, you will fail but you will also gain some times and the more important thing is that you’ll be placing yourself in a position where winning becomes a possibility.

I am writing this post as a way to motivate myself to keep pushing forward with my ideas, my dreams, my life, I truly hope that at least one of you gets motivated to keep trying and JFDI!