[HN Gopher] Addiction to ideas (2017)
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Addiction to ideas (2017)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-10-27 09:27 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (colleenrobb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (colleenrobb.com)
| greggsy wrote:
| Major epilepsy warning on iOS Safari btw
| Hendrikto wrote:
| I am on iOS Safari, and everything seems in order. What
| problems did you experience?
| greggsy wrote:
| Actually, it must have been Dark Reader. Heaving black /
| white flashing and reloads.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I learned nothing from that article.
| eternalban wrote:
| Unfair. Surely, TIL that there is such a thing as professorship
| in entrepreneurship.
| drekipus wrote:
| I was just thinking about this the other day. I am (was?)
| addicted to ideas.
|
| I love to create things and think of interesting situations that
| could potentially take off. The idea itself is thrilling! There's
| a self fuelling feedback loop.
|
| But I've learnt to temper myself a bit. Great ideas are common,
| but to even just implement one "fully" will take many years to
| then sell on to other people and get investments and so on, not
| withstanding time it takes to maintain. Something I can't balance
| with a full job and kids. (Funnily enough, my current job is
| maintaining software for another person's great idea, but less
| risky, more upfront money, and more focused on what I want to do,
| so why do I want to do my own?).
|
| I sometimes think I should start my own software shop so that I
| can action ideas, but realistically this is more risky, not less.
|
| Because I'm staring at screens all day during work hours, I
| really cannot bring myself to make prototypes. So instead I just
| look to fill my pen-and-paper journal with ideas and wireframes
| and things. I'm thinking of getting an eink tablet to digitise
| the process.
|
| This helps me to get the idea down and out of the system, and
| then I look at it a bit more objectively and realise it does or
| doesn't work, or that I wasn't understanding the original
| problems fully, or that it was a hammer looking for a nail. If
| anything seems sensible and is low effort I'll do more to
| validate it, writing down why it might fail.
|
| I think this helps me the most, and I have an index of ideas I
| can refer back to when I'm out in the park.
| glitchc wrote:
| A landing page doesn't work for everything right? A web-based
| product, sure, but what if it's something tangible? You need to
| build a prototype.
| mikesabat wrote:
| Figuring out how to test and validate quickly and inexpensively
| is still valuable. Yes, trickier if it's not SaaS or software,
| but still possible.
|
| If you take the YC credo, "Build something people want", there
| are two assumptions that need to be tested. 1) Do people want
| it and 2) Can you build it? I think that most times it's best
| to test #1 first.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Yeah that's one of my pet peeves with lean-startup type stuff.
| It's great for consumer products that aren't too different from
| what people are used to but not that useful for work that
| requires a lot of R&D (since there what you end up with often
| depends on constraints you learn about during the R&D process).
|
| Look at a technology that has had a massive impact on the
| world: fracking. People pursued that for many years with
| limited results before they were able to do it
| successfully/economically.
| lob_it wrote:
| As a life-long learner and technology native (not a digital
| douchebag), ideas, new concepts, innovation are part of a healthy
| routine.
|
| The authors misrepresentation of "the next uber" made me laugh.
| History has shown that living a passionate life pays dividends
| that are not inferior integers.
|
| Health is a good example of ideas that have the best residuals in
| life. No mention that 8 hours of quality sleep a night provide
| more value than tossing and turning.
|
| The author does not appear to be 21st century compatible. Mental
| illness is at a persons discretion. Not chasing 3rd world goals
| (mimick/imitation/fake) leaves more capacity for quality time.
| vonnik wrote:
| Just like nobody can get sober for you, everybody must stumble
| upon problem discovery and the mom test for themselves.
|
| It's hard to be lost. But less hard than wasting years of your
| life on a bad idea.
|
| https://vonnik.substack.com/p/a-building-complex
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It is a funny world because yes as a solo an idea without money
| coming in from customers is useless but with investors they might
| pay millions to help you see if an idea has traction (see all the
| highly engineered startups running in alpha or with free tier
| waitlists)
| samsquire wrote:
| I love writing my ideas down. I also work on software to
| implement my ideas.
|
| I do all my writing in the open, on GitHub and links are on my
| profile. I use markdown to write my idea journal. I create a
| heading for each idea.
|
| If you don't write ideas down, you won't have better ideas that
| the ideas you did have reveal. We know that many companies pivot
| or end up doing something they didn't originally intend to. The
| same is true for ideas. The more you do something the better you
| get at it.
|
| I am at 725+ computer ideas I enjoy writing about. I'm not the
| first for them but I enjoyed thinking of them (I didn't read
| about them elsewhere). I write about Parallelism, multithreaded,
| software design, software architecture, programming language
| design, futuristic things software should do.
|
| Ideas are where mathematics, science and theology come from.
| Someone heard or thought of an idea they like and wrote it down.
| You benefit from ideas and education everyday. Don't say they're
| worthless.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Writing software is my favorite way to write down my ideas!
| tehchromic wrote:
| "Keep in mind that ideally, you want your market to be addicted
| to you. You don't want to be addicted to your market."
|
| Brilliant
| jamesgill wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of Daniel Vassallo's 'Small Bets' ideas,
| especially this one: 'Treat ideas like cattle, not pets':
| https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1583480276134809606
| throwamon wrote:
| "Treat ideas like cattle... Except this idea."
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I've had a theory for a long time about how people can react to
| new ideas. Someone (usually me) comes up with a new idea and they
| expect one of two types of responses: Confirmation or
| Affirmation.
|
| Sometimes you just want to hear someone agree with you. You
| haven't thought it all out, the idea is in its initial stages and
| you don't want someone to be a wet blanket, you just want to get
| it out of your head and see if the person might be able to give
| you additional info or insights on it. You need a sounding board
| and a chance to just listen yourself talk. You don't need the
| person at that moment to start finding holes in a nascent idea.
| This is what I call affirmation.
|
| The other times, you've got an idea and you're ready to commit to
| it, but you need someone to play devil's advocate. You want them
| to sanity check the idea and tell you if they find anything wrong
| with it. You want them to poke holes in the plan so you don't do
| something dumb. You appreciate it when they really try to grok
| what you're saying and look for the problems. I call this
| confirmation.
|
| Ever get annoyed with your SO, friend or coworker because you're
| telling them some new idea and they give you the wrong kind of
| feedback? Maybe they're just too agreeable: "What? I'm agreeing
| with you." Stop it! I want your honest opinion! "Sounds fine to
| me." ARRGH! Or the other side, when they immediately jump in with
| objections: "I'm just saying that it's not realistic..." I know
| that, I'm just trying to... "And secondly..." Stop!
|
| When someone comes to me with something, the first thing I ask
| them is what sort of feedback they're looking for. Sometimes
| they're thinking about investing all their money and need someone
| to make sure their reasoning is sound. Sometimes they can tell
| they have a germ of a good idea, but not sure where to take it.
| Giving the right type of feedback is essential.
|
| This goes for GitHub projects or blog posts and lots of other
| things as well. Sometimes someone is putting something out there
| in the spirit of experimentation or brainstorming, other times
| it's something that is supposed to be a solid foundation or a
| real product. It's always a good idea when reacting to figure out
| which stage something is in, and contribute accordingly.
| night-rider wrote:
| Ideas without execution are just that: ideas. Yes, they are
| valuable, and you can never have enough of them, but without
| fleshing them out and taking meaningful action on them, they tend
| to rot, or on a long enough timeline, someone dreams up the same
| idea as yours and turns it into a million-dollar venture, which
| you could have done if you took action.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Facing the fact that ideas are ten a penny, it makes sense to see
| what necessary but perhaps still insufficient accessories an idea
| needs to prosper. In order of increasing value;
|
| an idea
|
| a good idea
|
| a good implementable idea
|
| a good implementable idea whose time has come
|
| an invention (the concrete verification of an idea)
|
| a design ( a workable invention)
|
| a potential product (reproducible/manufacturable design)
|
| a potentially profitable product
|
| a marketable and profitable product
|
| a marketable, profitable product, backed by money and good luck
| labrador wrote:
| > Facing the fact that ideas are ten a penny
|
| I've heard this before from inventors. It's the work you put in
| to realize the idea, they say. But they're inventors. They have
| a lot of ideas. Average people don't have a lot of ideas. Can
| we at least appreciate when we come up with an idea?
| 13415 wrote:
| Weird, I've made the opposite experience than described in this
| blog post. Most people I know, including family, tend to be
| skeptical about any idea and immediately come up with thousands
| of reasons why the idea is bad. Maybe I know too many negative
| people but I've always figured there are more naysayers than
| enthusiasts, and it's best to ignore the former.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| My theory is that some ideas are so risky that skepticism has
| become endemic. If optimism is overabundant then people may
| waste so much effort on impossible fantasies everyone suffers.
| My guess is there is an optimal balance of both.
|
| Religion in particular feels like a phenomenon built on
| unchecked optimism. And it has no shortage of waste and
| grifters, at least IME.
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