The Idea Machine

 What is the idea machine?  And where does it come from?  

It starts as an inkling in the back of your head, of ideas half thought and concepts not taught.  Perhaps it's a combination of a dozen different things.  Maybe it's something you keep saying over and over again.  And often it's just a creation that came through your brain.  

When the idea machine starts working, it's best to keep track of what it is saying.  Take notes.  Do not ignore the idea machine.  I can't remember the author, but the gist is thus: what you focus on grows.  If you focus on failure, you get more failure.  If you focus on ideas, you get more ideas.  

99% of them are going to be terrible.  But that doesn't matter.  I think it was Richard Branson who said "Opportunity is like the bus.  Another one comes along all the time."  Or something like that.  It's a good point, though.  Keep developing ideas.  Keep thinking.  

How long will it take?  Longer.

That's a pretty indecisive answer.  Some of the ideas in my head have been running around since 1992.  And I still haven't brought them to fruition.  Some of the ideas just require the correct set of inputs.  So I guess the best option is to keep putting in more inputs.  

I've been listening to the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin on audio book.  It's a good book that I got from Librivox.  It's the single author version.  Though his focus was primarily on the printing business, some of his ideas are pretty good.  The focus on creating value and frugality are definitely before their time.  

But I'm pretty sure his idea for the dollar bill was not "In God we trust" it was "Mind your business".  Which for him meant a large collection of different things, and fit in his category of what he wanted to pay attention to and focus on.  

Can I be any more broad and evasive than this?  Yes, yes I can.  Because my idea machine has merged into a half formed idea.  Now it's time to start producing the content.  Because the idea is worth very little.  It's in taking the idea to execution that it becomes valuable.  And that is the long slow, dull process.  But it's going to be a process that needs to be followed.  

The idea is one thing.  And that's great.  But executing the idea and bringing it to something that exists in the physical world?  That's the wonder.

That is where the real fun is.  

But now?  Slowly off the cliff into the oblivion of creation, and towards the valley of the unknown.  Somewhere in there, there's a Seth Godin quote.  

Is it working?

Is whatever you are doing working? 

That seems like an easy question, but it's a lot harder than is usually assumed.  It can be a problem of undefined success criteria.  When you set out to define your whats-it did you clearly define the success criteria?  If I'm guessing correctly you probably didn't.  

So why don't you sit back and define your success criteria.  Is this one of those full fledged plans, or just some concoction running through the back of your mind.  Because executing those is a pain in the ass. Turning that twisted hunk of an amorphous idea into reality is the stuff dreams are made of.  But with the plans you got going right now, it might as well be a pipe dream.  

Cue another drug reference.  Pipe dream: something that a person ingesting large amounts of drugs would imagine as the drugs run through their system.  Assumed to be something magical and fanciful.  

Might as well be a pipe dream with the level of pre-planning that went into this thing.  But you say "I know what I'm doing.  I've been thinking this out for years." And that's the problem.  You've been thinking about doing this thing, and not actually executing.  You've been listening to the collection of people that tell you it's more important to dream big dreams.  Sure, those are great.  But until they are executed they are worthless.  

Dreams without execution are worthless.  I'd almost say they are worse than worthless.  They are the half-thought ideas that are dragging you down when you should be going up.  You know what makes you feel better?  Executing some of those dreams.  Better to write a book that sells one copy than never finish the book.  Because it could sell a million copies.  But you will never know until you get the idea out of your head.  

Now that we've got that bit in order... How do we tell if this thing we want is actually succeeding?  Go back to the idea you created.  Go back to your original document.  Your original document should contain a few intervening steps that show where you are going, and how to guess that you are on target.  Did you complete goal one?  Are you talking to the people about your project?  Are you marketing it well?  Or at all.  I hope you are marketing it.  Are you making it a little bit closer to the finish line?  

Or are you stuck in a nebulous la-la land where you do things that don't really matter?  Because that's the way to tell if you are going the right direction.  Are you going somewhere and getting some sort of result.  Are there more words written?  More subscribers?  More content produced?  An income?  More income?  More hits to the website?  More comments?  

And which of those things is actually worth measuring?

The hard question about hard questions is that they are hard.  Which sounds like the stupidest sentence in the world.  Let me ask the question in a different manner:

Does it matter if you wake up at 5 am?

There's a lot of posts about that.  Lots of rise and grind people in the world who declare 5 am is the magic hour.  I do it.  I have been doing it for years.  But is that really the secret?

What about the midnight people?  Work until 1 or 2 in the morning after the hustle and bustle of the day is over.  That's the real ticket.  Or is it?  

I'll give you a real big hint: the time of day doesn't matter ONE BIT.  5 AM.  3 AM.  4 AM.  11 PM.  12 AM.  The specific time doesn't matter at all.  

Now let the hate mail flow...

What does matter?  That you have some time in every single day scheduled out to work on whatever it is you want to work on, free from distractions and free from the interruption of the rest of the world.  Freedom to work on what needs to be worked on without having to answer the beck and call of the world.  

That is what matters.  The time does not. Regularity matters.  Isolation matters.  Working on the important thing matters.  

All the rest is junk.

So how do you measure whether this thing is working or not? 

If I knew that...  well.  I wouldn't be here, trying to figure out the same thing.