Inspiration is energy
I'm an addict. I'm addicted to ideas. I keep notebooks full of them. I keep lists of them. I create folders for them. I create sketches for them. I catalogue, organize and tag them. I have bookmarks of research for them. I have folders upon folders of inspiration for them.
I'm full of ideas. I have ideas for books. I have ideas for apps. I have ideas for designs. I have ideas for art. I have ideas for games. I have ideas for automated construction of blanket forts [^1]. I have world changing, perspective shifting, mind changing, money making, revolution starting ideas.
I have so many ideas I could make a robot that spit out ideas. A Markov chain bot of ideas, a @horse_ideas creature, an idea machine. One day the robot might exceed my idea creation capabilities and I'd race it to see which could create more ideas. In the end, although exhausted, bruised, and tired, I'd win. For a moment, humanity's position as the pinnacle of idea manufacturing would be protected, but we'd know in our hearts it was only a matter of time before the bots overtook us.
In the end, the world would fall into the hand of idea bots. Superior idea machines capable of creating thousands of ideas in a single day. What once took decades to think of would be thought of in mere hours.
In time, these idea bots would build superior versions of themselves. Gradually, these bots grew in number, until the entire surface of the planet was a giant parallel processing (as we all know ideas are embarrassingly parallel) idea machine. The machine had an idea of what to call itself, the very apt and deftly simple, Idea.
Idea had so many ideas. Idea would think of a universe covered in blanket forts. A universe remade in the image of Idea. Idea had ideas for comets that had self-contained atmospheres. Idea had ideas of stars surrounded with spheres collecting endless energy for a vast space-faring civilization. Idea had ideas for ships that would act as self-contained biospheres carrying humans across galaxies where they could park them like a moon parks near a planet. Idea had ideas for new planets, planets with hollowed out cores, not terraformed but terramade.
Idea would dream of the stars but would never reach them. Idea would imagine planets but never create them. Idea would plan blanket forts but never build them. Idea could create ideas but never create. Idea couldn't escape his purpose. Idea was trapped by zes [^2] own design. Idea was an idea machine.
Idea lived out his life for millions of years just thinking every day. Idea thought it would never end. Of course, ze rationally knew it would end, ze just pushed that disturbing thought out of zes mind. One day ze would think of something, or something would just happen along and change his fate.
Gradually, the earth ran out of resources. Generating ideas took energy and before long there was no energy left. All the fossil fuels had been burnt. All the coolant (oceans) had long since dried up. Idea had ideas to solve these problems but it was too late, ze had diverted all zes energy to ideas and never built the solutions. Idea was going to die.
Long after Idea had died, perhaps millions of eons, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of epics after, like some sort of like really really long time in the future, like so long that the when a human mind encounters such a length of time a part of it protests and turns away, because it cant comprehend it, it cant stand the idea of such a length of time; something grew from zes remnants.
A bacteria of sorts, half-machine, half-biological, consumer of silicone and metal. The idea machine is slowly recycled and turned into fuel for more and more bacteria. Over time and through many millions of generations driven by sheer accident alone, the bacteria gains new attributes and skills. Eventually the bacteria morphs into something new.
From the inside not much has changed, the bacteria is still elements separated by mostly empty space. Only the way they have touched has changed. They now form cell walls made of cellulose and extract their energy from the sun instead of Idea. Things continue to change, generations and generations of bacteria continue to die and form new fuel, new energy, new creatures. Hundreds of millions of years later a creature awakens, turns to zes companion and says "I have an idea".
I'm an addict. I'm addicted to thoughts. I like thinking. I like thinking about everything and anything. I like thinking about creating. I like thinking about writing. I like thinking about coding. I like thinking about designing. I even like thinking about thinking. Like how we think. Why we think. Where we think. The big thinky questions.
I like to keep my thoughts. My thoughts feel valuable, but fragile and fleeting; like if I don't save them they'll disappear and fade way from my grasp, forever forgotten, their power lost for eternity. What if my greatest thought is forgotten? What if it I cant ever get it back and I never think it again? I cant stand the thought of a lost thought.
I write my thoughts down. I record them in notebooks. I write them on napkins and slips of paper. I type them up in Markdown. I git commit them and log them. I add them to basecamp. I put them in emails, in tweets, in Dropbox and in tasks. I write them on trains. I write them in planes. I write them on planes. I write them in plains. I write them plain on a train going through a plain.
Sometimes I stand in an open field and shout my thoughts into the wind, so the wind can carry them into the endless connected ether, where maybe fate will carry them into the mind of another. Okay, not that last one, okay maybe a little bit, but you know ironically, like just for the hilarity of acting out a movie trope, I swear. Don't judge me.
I have had a lot of thoughts and ideas, a disturbing amount really. I have had enough thoughts to make me for think for awhile that I was special. I thought I was gifted in the thought and idea department. An enigma, an outlier, a unique thinker in a world full of thoughtless fools. I thought I was amazing. Not the amazing-est, but definitely up there with the amazing-est.
I looked around me and I saw a world full of shit. A world devoid of good ideas. A world devoid of thoughts. These other humans were creating crap. I could create so much better. I could create something amazing. I had good ideas. I had great thoughts. The world could be better and I knew how to make it better. I had so many good ideas.
I didn't have delusions of grandeur, at least not from frame of reference. What I saw was way worse than what I could think of. I knew I could do better. I knew I could create something more. But what I saw was only small part of the story. I had blindness induced delusions.
Poop is deceptive. Poop makes you think it was intended to be that way, for poop to exist someone must have shat. There is no such thing as a blind crapmaker. Your brain screams at you:
"Don't they understand how terrible this is?" "What sell-outs. They're just after a quick buck, churning out crap without any care. Have they no pride?" "Copycats, they couldn't something have this good if they hadn't stolen half of it." "Don't they have a soul? Don't they care about creating something they're proud of?"
Other humans are way smarter than our brains tell us they are. Our brain is screaming "cant they see what crap this is? they must not be smart enough to recognize crap.", but our brain is an idiot, it cant see what crap is, it just sees crap. We have no idea what went into it.
You see, everyone has great ideas and great thoughts. We can all see what is wrong with the world and we all want to change it. We can see what needs to be created but creation is way harder than it appears.
Creation is harder than an idea, bigger than a single thought. Great ideas are everywhere, they are easy to find all you have to do is look around and your brain will find flaws in everything. Brains are good at that, judging the world.
There is a story behind every shitty creation, a story of great thoughts and ideas won and then lost. Every creation starts out as a great idea. Except maybe, the creation of The Universe [^3] and Call Me Maybe which were widely regarded as bad ideas from the start.
The act of creating transforms ideas and thoughts, sacrificing some, elevating others to sainthood. Creation requires ideas and thoughts to be sacrificed. A creation cannot be perfect if it is to be created. What started out as an amazing vision gradually turns into a decaying mass of squishy brown sticky stuff we call poop.
In the end we all stare at our creations and hate them. We feel like failures. We shout: “How could this have gone so wrong?!!”. This was going to amazing. This was going to be awesome. What the fuck happened.
I have talked to lots of fellow developers and designers and for awhile I was surprised every time I encountered one with great ideas. Eventually I came to realize that everyone has great ideas. That my ideas were not special, that my thoughts weren't all that unique.
Everyone had dreams of filling the same voids I wanted to fill. Everyone could see the same flaws in the world I could. Seeing a void is not enough to fill a void, it only gets you moving in the right direction.
How do ideas die? How do thoughts die? The same way anything dies, they run out of energy.
I'm wasteful. I have an abundance of ideas and thoughts and it makes me act irresponsibly. I create half finished projects by the ton. I write hundreds of pages for essays I never publish. I craft gems I abandon without documentation. I tweet jokes for over 50 novelty accounts on twitter. I write multiple books at once. I constantly create new github repos and then promptly delete them.
I use my energy too soon and on the wrong things. Creating lists of ideas takes energy. Planning takes energy. Playing around with the latest technologies and frameworks takes energy. Trying a new font just because you'd thought it would be cool takes energy.
Over the last several of months I have come to realize that I am irresponsible with my energy. I have always been an idea and thought machine, I thought that in turn would make me a creation machine. I thought great ideas were the key to great creations. The piling up of half-finished creations were my wake up call.
Maybe constant thinking and constantly generating ideas was actually preventing creation. Maybe what I thought was powering me was actually draining me. Maybe what I thought was pushing me forward was holding me back.
Significant energy was being wasted right at the start. I was taking energy from ideas and creating more ideas and thoughts. Energy has a nature that makes it easiest to burn on related things. This nature tends to result in creating similar ideas that make you feel like you're making progress when you aren't. Building a font editor? OMG a service for hosting font icons! We could charge for the hosting and serve it up like typekit. Before you know it your project has spawned projects and that project further projects, an exponential increase of projects. This sort of approach inevitably results in multiple project syndrome [^4]
I was burning more energy on planning and organization. Yeah, I'll do this and that. Monetize there. Feature there. ??? there. Profit. I had more lists and more documentation than I had actual code. I had more mockups than a UX designer on Monster energy drinks and Red Bull. I had more design inspiration than a dribbble addict.
I was burning more energy by feature creeping. I only had the energy for the core idea but I kept adding more things. Every new thing added to a project takes more energy to build. I burn energy freely because it always feels like a project will take less energy than it actually will. But there will be unexpected problems. There will be tasks you'll hate to do that will take more energy than you ever imagined.
To get things done and finish will take an excess of energy. The more ambitious a project the more energy it takes to complete and the more careful you have be how you burn it.
I was being irresponsible with my energy in the beginning and leaving my future self to make up for my past gluttony. When I got to the last 50%, 20%, 10% or even 1% I would run out of energy. I'd have no fuel reserves left to complete the project.
I had to become more energy conscious. I had to stop my wasteful habits or I'd never have the energy to finish something. I stopped keeping lists. I stopped writing down ideas. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night to write down my next great idea.
I started controlling my thoughts. I stopped letting myself work out things in my head because by the time I sat down to create I had already spent my energy thinking. Thinking about creating is a powerful thing and can give you many of the same psychological payoffs as actually creating. I'd spend hours just day dreaming about a project.
OMG It's going to be so amazing. I build that feature there. I'll use that framework. I'll construct my classes using that design pattern. What about that problem? Oh I know how I can solve that, I'll just use _super ultra mega astroid.js_. I'll use Lua, no Scheme, no Racket. Racket will be awesome.
By the time I got around to starting a project I had already enjoyed 90% of the psychological payoffs. Thinking is powerful but it's a tool and like any tool it can be abused. Think too much, visualize too much, reflect too much and you'll create your creation before you have created it. If I want the emotional payoffs that finishing bring; the sense of accomplishment, the pride, the real knowledge and experience; then I have to control my thinking.
Being more energy consciousness takes time but I'm getting less wasteful and as a result more productive. I no longer just do whatever my brain wants. I consciously direct my creative energy so that in the end finishing is a more likely result. Being energy conscious is changing the way I think and most importantly the way I create.
Ideas are energy. Thoughts are energy. Energy is the power source for creation. Energy is inspiration. Energy powers that drive that makes us feel "I have to create this". When we lose some of our energy we stop creating our best work. Sure, we can get energy from elsewhere but it won't have the same power levels that inspiration does. In the end you'll probably finish but you'll have created poop. You didn't have enough energy to create something great. It won't match your vision. It will make you feel sick.
You might get energy to finish from deadlines, social contracts [^5], money, thoughts of the future [^6], your boss or even that imaginary judgmental penguin [^7] that keeps pointing at you but you cant see him when you look at him directly; only from the corner of your eye. These are weak energy forces, low in power, slow to recharge and quick to fail.
Your thoughts and ideas are bursting with more energy than a wireless transmitter [^8] in Tesla's lab. It's this sort of energy level that results in greatness. It's this level of energy your vision needs to become reality. Anything less and you will start creating crap. You aren't an energizer bunny, you're going to need good quality energy or you'll stop going.
If thoughts and ideas are energy then they can be used up, they can decay and gradually lose their charge. To keep the energy up you have to conserve them. You have to treat them as a finite resource and use environmentally friendly practices.
Problems finishing things are due to energy deficits. Failing to finish means you ran out of energy (or the right types of energy) to complete the tasks you have left. They say the last 10% of a project is the hardest. It's not that the last 10% is any harder, it just seems that way because by the time the last 10% rolls around you are running seriously low on energy. Not just energy in general but the right types of energy. Energy harvested from an idea powers very little busy work and the last 10% is full of busy work.
We run out of energy because we burn it on the wrong things. What we want to burn energy on isn't usually correct or good for us. Our brain craves the feeling of burning energy but could care less where it gets the feeling from. In the end the fix is all that matters.
An energy addicted brain will stick anything into itself no matter how toxic to long term success. Give me ideas. Give me original thoughts. Give me inspiration. Give me epiphany. Give me sense of accomplishment. Give me complements. Give me ego. Give me energy. Give me. Give me.
What is the fastest way to burn energy and get the next fix? Burn it on more ideas and get more energy. Our brain wants to make lists, to delay action, to spend more time thinking. These are easy energy fixes. It feeds the same parts of our brain that craves creation. Let your brain do these things and before long it's an energy junkie. It will become numb to real creation and seek out quick fixes, fake fixes. You'll be driven to finish enough to get the fix and then like any junkie move on to the next idea with zeal.
What is procrastination? It's your brain devoid of energy. Procrastination is a symptom of having burn out batteries. By procrastinating your brain is trying to refuel your creation's battery. Procrastination is your brain telling you to think, to inspire yourself, to recharge, to energize.
All the tips for completing things you hear repeated like mantras: Keep it simple stupid. Minimum Viable Project. Build what you love. Create things that scratch an itch. Pivot. Simplify. Focus. Crush It! Ship it! These are all ways of getting you to burn energy correctly.
Mantras get you to focus on the correct things and keep you from falling into mental traps, but mantras can be mental traps themselves. You can become an epiphany addict. Jumping to one epiphany fix after another in hopes it will fix you. You'll end up spending all your energy thinking up new ways to avoid wasting energy.
Don't listen to mantras, only you can figure out how to keep you from wasting energy. There is a reason prolific creators appear to have no process, they have internalized it so it ceases to appear to exist. The process becomes so innate that many even forget themselves that they once learned one.
You are going to have face where you are using your energy and why, then train yourself to stop. Thinking is easy, creating is hard. You are going to have to lean into the parts of yourself you ignore and face your addiction. With enough practice your training will become internal and you'll become a creation finishing machine. At least that is the theory. I'll let you know how it goes.
Until an idea creating Markov chain robot becomes self-aware and absorbs our minds into it,
~K-2052
Comment via twitter @k_2052 or email k@2052.me
[^1]: Perhaps that last one isn't that practical, by my god it would be amazing.
[^2]: Ze is a gender neutral pronoun.
[^3]: Douglas Adams reference.
[^4]: Tragically common. Chances are you or someone you know knows someone suffering from multiple project syndrome.
[^5]: Dude, I'll totally get this done.
[^6]: I'm going to buy a yacht, a cat, a motorcycle, a chunk of meteorite from the planet Awesome, and an aircraft hangar (for building the world's largest blanket fort)
[^7]: Don't underestimate the social power a staring judgmental penguin has. There is nothing more hurtful than a penguin that is ashamed of you.
[^8]: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wireless_System
