Killing Off Your Darlings

As a creative person, a maker, you often face the challenge of killing off your ideas. At one point you had an idea that you pursued with passion and dedication. It was all you were thinking about.

Then you start going deeper into an idea — you think about it longer, write it down, start thinking about the specifics, outlining its main features. Halfway through this process doubts start to emerge — is this really the solution to the problem I have found, does the problem even exist, do I still feel excited about the idea? You may even find that there is already a solution that does a better job than the one you were thinking of. The most important question — asking yourself if you still feel as passionate and crazy about your idea? And if the answer is not convincing enough, meaning ‘HELL YEAH!’, perhaps you have to reconsider. You may have to make the hard choice — killing off your darling.

As time and energy are limited resources we have to carefully evaluate how we invest them over time, focusing only on those ideas worthy of a ‘HELL YEAH’!