From Intention To Action
04 Nov 2013I think it’s fair to say that everyone has ideas. They are the lifeblood of the mind and the foundation of hopes and dreams for the future. I think it’s also fair to say that most ideas don’t make it out of the individual’s head. Eventually you forget the specifics of it or why you thought the idea was important in the first place.
What’s that smell?
The problem is lack of execution. When ideas are allowed to persist as pure concept, they begin to rot. Like the unfortunate chipmunk that made it into your crawlspace - only to die - ideas trapped in your head start to decompose and stink up the place.
Say you have an idea for a blog post - initially, it’s fresh and new and full of creative potential. However just like no plan survives contact with the enemy, no idea is so perfect as to survive execution. What seemed so clear and elegant in your mind becomes gauche on the page. But that’s exactly the point! A fully formed idea in your head does not have room to grow, change, and adapt (it is, after all, fully-formed). The act of committing it into the real world forces you to consider parts of it that seemed clear, but were just being filled in with fuzzy mind-stuff. And the process of resolving these deficiencies allows for the idea to grow in new directions - sometimes unexpected ones.
Breaking the Habit
A very real danger of letting ideas die on the vine is how it habituates you to think and act in a certain way. Having ideas that don’t go anywhere is not really a productive activity - it amounts to daydreaming. Years of doing this and the natural impulse when faced withan idea is to do nothing. This means that when an opportunity to do something meaningful comes along, you will discard it like the rest of the ideas in your head.
If this is already you, realize that there’s always a way to change and grow. Namely, you have to execute. It might suck at first and people may not like it or understand it, but the first priority is to break the habit. Competent execution will come in time - as you get better at doing whatever it is you’re trying to do.