99 lines
5 KiB
HTML
Executable file
99 lines
5 KiB
HTML
Executable file
id: dmwi
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title: Doing more with my Ideas
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previous: wgl
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next: ile
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date: 2021-04-10
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---
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<h2>
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Doing more with my Ideas
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</h2>
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<p>
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It seems that a lot of very deep thought has come from conversations lately.
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Last week was “why” and this week was a less philosophical and more practical question.
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</p>
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<p>
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Walks are amazing.
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When I am alone they are amazing for thinking, and with company they are a perfect time to have a great conversation.
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I don’t have my phone or any other distractions out while walking (except for music) and that gets put away when I have company.
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</p>
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<p>
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So the other day on a walk with my girlfriend we were talking and she asked what the purpose of the idea generation that I do is.
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That is: I try to come up with 10 ideas a day.
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The question was not really about the thought exercise itself, but what I want to do with that skill I am training.
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My initial answer was that I wanted to be good at generating ideas of course, but that was not enough.
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“Why do you want to be good at generating ideas? What do you want to do with those ideas?”.
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I outlined some very vague things such as starting a business, self employment, making interesting tools, writing etc.
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Then she asked why I was not doing anything with the hundreds of ideas that I had already come up with over the past few months.
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Even if most are bad; some must be useful.
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I couldn’t answer that.
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</p>
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<p>
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I realized that I had been overlooking the important fact that there could be a lot of value in the mess of ideas I had already come up with.
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I was waiting for an idea to feel just right before going after it while forgetting that that sort of expectation is unreasonable.
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I was only looking at my gut reaction to the ideas without delving any deeper to find the value that was not directly apparent.
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</p>
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<p>
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This is one reason why it is vitally important to talk with others often.
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Not only do they provide a differing perspective but the act of expressing an idea will refine it.
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I have to think of an idea much more clearly when I explain it to someone else than if it is just floating around in my head.
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</p>
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<p>
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I came to the conclusion that I was losing out on: the value of the ideas themselves and on building other skills that can come from pursuing them further.
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So I have spent the last week working on a system to help with this.
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I don’t know exactly how well this experiment will turn out.
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</p>
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<p>
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My daily practice (which I have been slacking on) is still generating 10 ideas.
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The system consists of a program that will provide sequential filters so I can take each idea as far as it merits and practice the further steps to implementation.
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At each step if I find a roadblock I can’t get through, I can drop the idea there.
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The program takes care of organization, file creation, and access.
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This makes working on the ideas as easy as possible.
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</p>
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<p>
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The system involves four steps after the generation of the idea.
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</p>
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<p>
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Quick look.
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Does the idea have merit and is it interesting to me?
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</p>
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<p>
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Generate a coherent vision of what this idea might look like if it was implemented, what the final stage would actually do.
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I don’t need specifics here but just articulate what the outcome would be without worrying about how to get there yet.
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</p>
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<p>
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Develop an actual plan for it.
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Is it possible? This is the step where I will have to start researching specific methods of implementation and try to coherently plan how it might come about.
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</p>
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<p>
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Lastly the experimentation step.
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If an idea makes this far it is something that I can see implementing and am fairly interested in.
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Here I will develop small scale experiments to actually test the implementation.
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This is the first point where the idea will have to actually come in contact with the outside world to test its viability.
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</p>
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<p>
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If the experiments are promising then I can go further.
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There is no restriction on what the ideas might be.
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Business ideas, home projects, role playing games, anything is fair game.
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I am hoping that actually pursuing them will result in a bunch of new and interesting activities and projects.
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</p>
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<p>
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Yesterday I loaded all of the ideas from the past months into the program and started filtering through the first step.
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It is quite enjoyable to revisit some of the horrendous ones I came up with.
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In total there are a little over 1000.
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</p>
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<p>
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I plan to work through the steps as I have time.
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My goal is to spend a little time each day working on it.
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I have several other daily practices I am trying to implement so it is going to be wherever I can fit it in at the moment.
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</p>
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<p>
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Most of my daily practices have been suggested through books, podcasts etc so this is one of the first experiments that is my own.
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I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out over the next few months.
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</p>
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<p>
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Thanks for reading.
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</p>
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<p>
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Phone time: 16h 30m
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</p>
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