Coming up with ideas and dismissing them.

This has been the most unproductive, unsocial, unrestful weekend I have had in a very long time. The feeling of restlessness has not left since April.

April was an awesome month for one main reason. It was the first time I actually finished a side project I started on my own. I spent about five months building an app, just for the fun of learning how to do it. Ever since I’ve hit publish on that project, I’ve been lacking in something to keep me busy at odd hours. Something to capture my interest and work towards. Something to struggle with and overcome.

The problem has been that I don’t have any viable ideas to pursue. Or so I tell myself.

So I decided to unproductively troll the internet on side project ideas. How to find ideas. What to do if you don’t have any ideas. The thing is, most often we do think of something, but then quickly second guess it. Instead of starting, we just keep pondering.

We come up reasons why it would never work — it’s too silly, too small, too niche, or too why-would-anyone-ever-use/need-that. And personally, the toughest reason to get past — there’s already a product similar to this.

We keep seeing all the obstacles before we even give the idea a chance to grow — undoubtedly due to baseless excuses, and fear of failing.

But I figured I should at least put the ideas out there. So here are a few random things I thought of and dismissed five seconds later…

• Problem: I can spend an upwards of 60 minutes to pick an ice cream flavor. Even though at the end of the day I can devour ice cream, regardless of the kind. What Flavor? will be an app that detects my location and what store I’m in, and randomly spits out a flavor they have in stock to try and save me precious time.
• Problem: Some people talk in monotone and it’s the definition of torture when you’re forced to listen to it. Uptone will be an app where you can record the person, and it inserts highs/lows/pauses/enthusiasm/other things that would make it pleasant to listen to, and spit out a less torturous version of their talk.
• Problem: Too often we look for things that closely match our interests, whether it’s in music/movies/food/etc. Oppositely will be an app where I can enter in what I like, and it suggests me things exactly the opposite of that. You know, to broaden my horizons, live on the edge and step out my comfort zone every once in a while.
• Problem: I was in SF the other week, and only had two hours to kill before I had to be at the airport. I wanted to explore, but it took me a while trying to find something nearby, that’s open and won’t close in the next 10 minutes, and that doesn’t cost too much. I didn’t want to dig through hundreds of places and see if the timings would even fit my schedule. Place.me will be an app that will answer this in the least time consuming way — ‘I’ve got [X hrs] to kill in [location], what can I do?’