Stop being judgemental about your own ideas.
…and just write them down.
Ideas, well they are dime a dozen. Most of us have faced the situation when you get an amazing idea and you have nowhere to record it. Most people get it in bathrooms, I get them when I am driving. Well, I want to talk about a situation where I get ideas, but then I start examining the feasibility of it, whether or not it will be successful, if it is economical, I enter the feedback loop from hell. I contemplate if the idea is worth it.
Worth what? it is an idea. It deserves consideration no matter how wacky it is.
Being judgmental is an inbuilt bias that we all have. But, it is not an unavoidable condition. With ideas, we usually face what is called an outcome bias, which is essentially “the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.”
I have thought a lot about the concept of ideas and even written a few other pieces about it, like:
Were all great startups dumb ideas once?
A rough guide on polishing The Big Idea.
Rebranding the concept of Idea: Thinking outside the ‘bulb.’
and,
But never had I wondered, the fact that when I was giving these pieces a thought, I was also judging them way before I should have.
There is nothing wrong with judging, only the right time to consider judging them. Filtering, not judging is a more appropriate word which is a phase that begins after you jot down those ideas and thoughts.
The mind is a cluttered place with millions of neurons enabling millions of thoughts throughout the day. Sometimes, we can’t help but spiral. One thought leads to another and soon, you are spiraling.
Writing grounds you. It helps focus, almost as if you are hearing yourself talk and things will make more sense once you have them written down.
Noting it down also lets you look at the chain of thought which will give an added perspective about the idea when you are analyzing it.
Once you develop this practice, you can create your own strategic methods of organizing your thoughts, analyzing them, getting better outcomes, develop processes to get better ideas even.
Or not. no judgments. I write my ideas in my dedicated book of ideas, or a Starbucks tissue. there is no between.
