Experiment

How do you know whether an idea is stupid or not if you don’t act on it and see what happens?

Ideas have always caused me problems. I have lots of them. Some may even be good. Until a few years ago, I wasn’t writing any of them down. Something would come to me, I’d spend a minute or two congratulating myself for potentially shining my brilliance on humanity, and then the thought would pass on through, never to be heard from again.

Then, through a combination of technology—Siri plus Evernote on my iPhone—and the obvious practice of carrying a notebook everywhere I go, I enabled myself to capture all these ideas as soon as they materialized.

You’d think this would’ve solved the idea problem by now, but it hasn’t. This is because I don’t act on any of these things—thinking, in retrospect, that they’re too stupid to go anywhere. That’s the common theme here—that idea of just letting things rot. I’m nothing more than a list maker. I make lists. But what good is a giant to-do list if you’re not planning on doing any of it?

I’m writing this post because I had an idea last week that I’d really like to try. I should probably just go ahead and do it, but I’m also trying to figure out why I have such a hard time pulling the trigger on so many things—so I’m both analyzing this little character flaw and issuing a disclaimer, of sorts, regarding what I’m planning on doing here next week.

Saying all this in public is also a way to leverage myself into doing something about it—although we all know I’m full of shit when I claim I’m going to do anything on this site. I mean, how many “comebacks” can one guy claim he’s about to make? This time, however, I want to see what happens when I step up and take action on one of these random ideas. In keeping with this week’s theme, this might be a good habit to adopt.

Anyway, discipline week continues. Stay tuned, I guess.