15 ms·

Idea Debt

468 points by cdvonstinkpot 11y ago

bobby_9x 11y ago
This has happened to many so many times. The other situation I've had is that even when I start working on my next idea, I start getting distracted by a ton of new ones.
- seivan 11y ago
  Yup same here. It's hard to make decision on what to stick with and finish.
- sharemywin 11y ago
  I think the more I work on my idea the worse it sounds compared to the others. But, I've decided to finish the product one way or the other.
nazarewk 11y ago
Damn, those Forest Lords sound suspiciously like Malazan Book of the Fallen ;D
vog 11y ago
This is why I moved a huge portion of my TODO list into an IDEAS list. This is an outliner document (Org-mode) that contains notes on lots of different ideas. So why didn't I just delete those items? Because writing down that stuff helps me not to think about it the whole day if I don't want to. The IDEAS list grows and grows, but that's okay. I don't feel obliged to implement any of these ideas. Whenever I recall an idea, I go to that document, add some notes, and that's it. No deep research, no domain buying, no name searching. Just writing or extending on what comes to my mind, and roughly structuring it. From time to time it happens that I do want to implement one of these ideas. And in that case I have some nice, simple spec to start from. As a side note, I started to do that after I read "Writing, Briefly" from Paul Graham (http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html), which contains the following great advice: ... when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with; accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file; don't feel obliged to cover any of them; ... These points are applicable far outside the scope of writing. In that sense, my IDEAS list is the clearly separated "bottom" of my TODO list that contains the "accumulated notes". As a final note, this concept seems to be somehow related to the Not-To-Do list that some people advocate.
- vkjv 11y ago
  I also use the `IDEA` tag in addition to `TODO` and `FIXME`. My definitions: * IDEA: This is neat and could be helpful, but is probably okay if it never gets done. * TODO: Not doing this has some measurable ill effect. Maybe maintainability or constraining scale. * FIXME: This is a temporary work-around while finishing a feature. It should never be shipped.
  - beat 11y ago
    Within our startup, there's a separate Slack channel called "Crazy ideas" and a separate column in Trello for things that are ideas rather than plans.
- boothead 11y ago
  This seems similar to the idea of a spark file? http://lifehacker.com/5941997/defrag-your-brain-with-a-spark-file http://lifehacker.com/5941997/defrag-your-brain-with-a-spark... edit Also do you have anything written down about using org-mode for todos and ideas?
  - vog 11y ago
    > This seems similar to the idea of a spark file? Indeed! The concept of a "spark file" describes exactly what I'm doing. > Also do you have anything written down about using org-mode for todos and ideas? This is pretty basic Org-mode usage. My To-Do list is just nested headings, each with a TODO or DONE marker (Shift+Left, Shift+Right). My IDEAS list doesn't even have those markers, it is just nested headings and nested lists. The only "advanced thing" that I do is moving items via Mod+Up and Mod+Down. This is very handy, as that moves the whole subtree up and down. And I'm using the "Tab" key for folding and unfolding subtrees. Org-mode offers much more than what I'm using here. I'm not yet a power-user of Org-mode. For example, the "agenda view" might simplify a lot of what I'm doing (not for IDEAS, but for TODO, meetings, etc). But I didn't find the time to dig deeper into Org-mode yet.
    - atmoz 11y ago
z3t4 11y ago
I consider myself a very productive person ... But I just removed about 30 years of work from my todo-list, after reading this article.
elcapitan 11y ago
The concept is probably related to something you could call 'recursive idea debt' or 'recursive learning debt' in tech - when you come up with an exciting idea, and because you have no constraints you start thinking about this great new technology you would learn for that project and use. And then you would find 3 other interesting technologies or concepts related to that which you would want to learn more about. And so on.
- shostack 11y ago
  Definitely been hit with this. On the flip side, I usually learn something new and useful out of it. I'm an "early" programmer, so there's a ton I don't know. When I start breaking an idea I get to things like "oh, how do I have this running in the background while the user is still doing something?" That got me into Rails background workers, the Sidekiq and Foreman gems, etc. All were super useful for me to know about, and concepts that I knew existed in a vague sense, but hadn't actually gotten to yet. That said, these totally take me down a rabbit hole, and are ultimately counterproductive towards the core idea if they are distracting enough.
benjaminjosephw 11y ago
> "If… you have 'binders of lore' and no book... you’re living with serious Idea Debt." Moving from a daydream to some actual artefacts the first step _away_ from Idea Debt, not further into it. In technical terms, this could be writing a script instead of building an application or creating a spec and some documentation before writing some code. I'd argue that this is where you start to flesh-out and make real your idea. Binders of "lore" would be an amazing resource to have at hand when you actually do come to writing your book. Surely this isn't a waste of time but it's where the idea ruminates, develops and matures. If anything, it improves the quality of an idea and can help make that idea a reality.
- jib 11y ago
  Inventory is waste. It is one of the most insidious kinds of waste since it feels productive generating it. In reality it is waste. It being waste doesn't mean you dont need it - that's how waste builds up: you create stuff in case, or you save things in case, or you build an extra large buffer just in case. It's all done with good intentions. If one of your goals in life is to be effective you need to work to eliminate as much inventory as possible, same as the other types of waste. Overproduction, Inventory and Overprocessing are the three most insidious types of waste - they seem like good things. Why not gold plate the thing? Just add these few features in case you need them. Why not make a few extra just in case, why not save that thing that you may need later or maybe you will finish at some point. The other types of waste are more clearly negative.
  - slavik81 11y ago
    Sure, inventory is waste. You need to store it, protect it and organize it. Maybe you never even end up using all of it. The thing is that without inventory, you can't build anything. Manufacturers optimize their supply chains to keep minimal inventory and reliably acquire the supplies they need just before they run out. ...but the creative supply chain is not reliable. You need a lot of inventory because good ideas might not arrive right before you need them. Fortunately, a binder full of notes is a lot easier to manage than manufactured parts for thousands of cars.
  - 11y ago
the-dude 11y ago
aka Brain Crack : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8
stared 11y ago
I used to have ideas on a to-do list, but it was torturing me (especially as it takes a few orders of magnitude to come up with an idea, however elaborate, than to do it; and doing it is also a reality check - some things seam clever until you start doing it and meeting contradictions). Now it is a separate list, entitled "n-th-priority-tasks-tml.md". And I try to keep no regret for not doing things. For doing, as cheap as it may sound "just do it". As I heard from one writer "Imperfect books have one advantage: they exist". (At least for me perfectionism is the prime reason for delaying such projects.) And one advice from a friend of mine, when I was delaying (for 2 years) writing a quantum game (http://quantumgame.io http://quantumgame.io, coming this March!): "the only thing you lack is sitting on your ass and writing code". She was right. Also, one of my write ups: "If you have a great project, do moonlight. Don’t wait for better times, because they won’t come. Maybe you overstate the need of money, institutional support or social confirmation?" from http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects
- vog 11y ago
  > Now it is a separate list, entitled "n-th-priority-tasks-tml.md". And I try to keep no regret for not doing things. It's interesting to read that I'm not the only one doing this. See also my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11032799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11032799 I chose the name "ideas" instead of "n-th-priority-tasks" to clearly distinguish this list from actual tasks. Because they aren't. None of those entries deserves to be named "task", until one starts to get serious about them and creates a prototype. And this will happen only to a tiny fraction of those entries.
  - stared 11y ago
    The title may be misleading (actually, I remember it is "n-th-priority-things.md"). I've just checked its heading (I keep this file always open) and it's "n-th prority ideas". I read your comment before posting my own. :) When it comes to their length and (what is more important) being specified, it varies a lot. From a blog post I have in mind and can write in a few hours, to things that make take months or years. I was thinking about making it public, but: - most of them are idiosyncratic and a few words stands for a long idea, - I am afraid of self-censorship (is it good enough for the public? doesn't it sound offensive?). When it comes to tasks-ideas separation, it reminds me of http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd073010s.gif http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd073010s.gif (I used to have to do bullets which were there for years - and they were causing so much pain).
danieltillett 11y ago
I love my idea debt. Not only are they a connection to my younger self, but old ideas are a rich ore to be mined for new ideas. Some of my best current ideas are old ideas that have been tweaked by experience or external change so they are now relevant. Keep working on your ideas, but make sure you are actually turning some of them into reality.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  I find it amazing how many of the ideas from my vault exist in some form or other in the real world now.
  - hueving 11y ago
    This happens to many people. You encounter a problem or inefficiency and think up of some software or hardware that would make it better.
  - augustl 11y ago
    I love the phrase "if you're the only one with an idea, it's probably a bad idea" :)
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      There's something to be said about "idea space". most ideas hold little variance, and other people will have them. But some ideas can hold so much variance that no, nobody else in the world will even think about it.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      This could be shortened to "if you have an idea then it is probably a bad idea" since most ideas are bad.
      - rorykoehler 11y ago
        People seemed to take it as if I was bragging about how many good ideas I have had (parent comment 2 levels up). In reality what I find amazing is that most of my ideas were terrible, solutions looking for a problem, and I'm glad I didn't pursue them.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
amelius 11y ago
I wonder how this works for somebody like Elon Musk. Does he have idea debt?
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  Probably has tons of idea debt but he is also very single minded in what he wants to achieve so it's probably easier for him to discard ideas and only do the ones no-one else can do that will go some way towards saving humanity.
hellofunk 11y ago
Steven King has said something that I've come to support, that note/list-keeping is a great way to let bad ideas survive. He claims that a really good idea will survive in your head on its own, and a bad idea will die. And that by writing down every idea, you are polluting your landscape of possibilities by immortalizing ideas that are better left forgotten.
- edwinespinosa09 11y ago
  Kevin Kelly, when the creative director at Wired, said something similar about choosing which stories to write about. He would never write a story himself until a topic had been passed up by too many writers that it began to frustrate him.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  My ideas directory is so full of trash that it's pointless to list it... I don't think putting stuff there is a drag to me. Anyway, I've had plenty of cases where I take notice of my original idea, and weeks later with a more worked-out solution in my head, I look at the notes and realize that my original idea was indeed much better than what I had on my head.
- geezer 11y ago
  I would disagree with Steven King here. Once you write down ideas, it allows you to reconsider them later in a different light, a difference context. I believe that is extremely valuable because it is crucial to analyze an idea from various perspectives before embarking on implementing it. Embarking on an idea not well thought out can be extremely expensive.
  - chiaro 11y ago
    Yep, definitely. The process of writing anything out (ideas, emotions, plans) lets you separate out the roles of describing the idea vs criticising it. Trying to evaluate them in your head requires you to do both simultaneously.
- wellpast 11y ago
xiaoma 11y ago
This is pretty stark contrast to James Altucher's "idea machine" concept. That's where you push yourself to come up with 10 ideas daily in order to build your "idea muscle" concept. Some days he'd come up with 10 ideas for one specific person or business. It seems a bit odd, but the guy did make millions repeatedly (after squandering 100% of his wealth, repeatedly).
- radiorental 11y ago
  Somewhat anecdotally... At work, our team isn't the biggest bunch of sports fans so our shoot-the-sh1t talk is primarily fantasy start-up ideas. We bounce the ideas off each other, critique them, laugh. Just in the last week; I want to create a VR game that's sync'd to your music and you hook up your exercise machine to to move through the game. (inspired by a DIY post here on HN) My boss has moved on from a device that will shut down every device in the house for family dinner onto some Medical thing he's 'working on' with a colleague. It's all good fun, creative & social.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  Having ideas is easy, but actually doing something with them is different story. Ok there is minor difference between a good idea and a bad idea, but going from getting a good-enough idea to actually doing something about it, and following the project through to completion, is the hard part. Related: https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-most-ridiculous-startup-ideas-that-eventually-became-successful https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-most-ridiculous-startup-...
- kazagistar 11y ago
  I think they can be reconciled. Idea debt is over-valuing existing ideas. You just have a few dozen plans that you keep going over and not acting on. Coming up with a bunch of ideas would make that harder. You would have thousands and thousands if you kept them, so you just discard them while still improving the skill of having good ideas for when it counts.
  - xiaoma 11y ago
    I like this line of thought. If you are an idea machine, you're actually a lot less likely to be tied to any one idea and ride it down to the bitter end. Instead, you'd realize that most ideas aren't that great and it would take a higher and higher bar to impress yourself. Maybe the dangerous thing is when ideas are in a state where maybe they're plans but you're uncertain and instead of executing on them or deciding not to you just let them accumulate and sap your attention.
cdnsteve 11y ago
The post was a very nice read and hit a personal chord for me. I'm that guy that hoards domain names for all these amazing project idea's. I've started to organize projects into Trello boards, most important ones get their own project board and details start to get hashed out. The funny thing is that I've flat out closed many boards, because I've lost interest or the idea doesn't seem to solve the problem any longer. That's OK. I think it lets me distill down the best ones for true idea investments. As long as it's full-filling and you learn something along the way, then why not?
ajuc 11y ago
IMHO the problem is talking. When you talk about your idea you receive big part of gratification for almost no effort.
- xhrpost 11y ago
  http://www.petershallard.com/why-telling-people-your-goals-is-a-fatal-mistake/ http://www.petershallard.com/why-telling-people-your-goals-i...
- joslin01 11y ago
  I fully agree. I've seen this happen with my younger self countless times. I would get excited about an idea, tell someone all about it, and then suddenly feel less motivated to work on it. Anything I'm serious about, I try not to talk about anymore as a result.
nsb1 11y ago
Thinking of this as 'debt' doesn't seem quite right to me. It's not like someone's going to come and break your kneecaps some day if you don't act on these ideas. You don't owe these ideas to anyone, and you don't have to 'pay them back'. Calling this debt is like calling the hours while we sleep and are not being paid 'income debt', or calling our front lawn 'food debt' because we haven't planted a garden there. How dare we! I'm as guilty as anyone of amassing ideas and half-baked projects in various files and/or boxes of junk around the house, but I don't think of them as debt. They're all opportunities. Some are good, some are bad, and some have been missed, but they're not debt. I happen to think that some of them have the potential to make me a lot of money should I choose to implement them, but there are no guarantees. There is nobody out there saying, "Here's a check for $20M if you implement that idea right there, and you get to keep half." 'Follow your dreams'...'Do what you love and the money will follow'...'Nothing ventured, nothing gained' these are phrases that all sound great from the other side of success, but when you have a normal life with a family and a mortgage, the decision to pursue your opportunities is not as cut and dried. Having to weigh the consequences of not earning a paycheck to pursue one of these opportunities against food on the table or missing a mortgage payment, or even just not spending those evening free-time hours with your kids changes the equation substantially.
- jerf 11y ago
  I think the idea is that some people experience them as debt they owe themselves. If you've never felt that way, I can see why this would not make sense to you. (No sarcasm or harshness intended; I mean that straight.) Some of us had to come to this conclusion by a harder route. For myself, I still learned it fairly early, but I do remember learning it. My natural inclination was to finish everything. As I type that, it occurs to me for the first time that I grew up in an environment where that was explicitly said to me sometimes. Even to this day, my now-retired father can be heard angsting about the projects he has not finished, and he tried his well-meaning best to pass that on to me. Perhaps this stems from the problems of leaving the physical projects he primarily works on half-done; a half-done remodeling is an ugly thing. A half-done car restoration takes up a lot of space and gets worse over time if you don't work on it as it basically rots. But creative projects have different rules. I've got at most a few hundred kilobytes of old programs lying in my sentimental directory... who cares? Who even knows? It's so tiny I tend to even forget it exists.
miguelrochefort 11y ago
I've had this vision for a revolutionary system when I was 12. I think about it every single day. Yet, my only accomplishment is thousands of pages of notes and ideas about possible use cases for this system. I haven't wrote a single line of code. I tried blogging about it, but I can't decide where to start. You can find glimpse of the idea in some of my HN/Reddit posts/comments, but that's about it. This have never felt satisfied or truly happy since. I don't know what to do next.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Thousands of pages of documentation must be how Hell feels like for engineers ;) I'd start by reducing it. Either generalize or make it less ambitious (whatever fits better your idea).
- beat 11y ago
  Have you read The Lean Startup? That can help. Also, TSTTCPW (the simplest thing that could possibly work). Pry a little piece of it loose. Don't think too much about which piece. Build the simplest possible version of that little piece. "Simplest" can be a tremendous challenge in itself, because scope creep and gold-plating are so easy. Part of the work will be decoupling your little piece from the rest of it. But make something that works!
- wolfgke 11y ago
  I'd set up a wiki to bring the notes and ideas in order.
- nairboon 11y ago
  I glanced briefly over your posts and it seems that you're dealing with a complex system. The trouble with those is that you can't just break it down to a simple prototype, because by simplifying it you lose exactly the properties you're interested in. Actually building it, requires a solution to a couple of hard problems, which themselve pull in even more. So the longer you work on it, the slower you make any progress and the easier it is to get lost just by the sheer range of ways to tackle it. However, somehow those complex ones are just way more interesting for myself, I pick them every time over "the simple things", but the result is, that I too can't show any visible progress, because it's not done yet and no simple prototype can show/imitate the system as a whole. If you ever discover a sound methodology for these kinds of problem, please tell me about it.
vdnkh 11y ago
I'm guilty of this, but I can't stop. What I do now is focus more more on "micro-ideas" which I can finish start to end in a day/weekend/week. Consequentially, these ideas are much harder to come by
xhrpost 11y ago
This, this is probably the biggest and yet least recognized obstruction for wannapreneurs. I know because I've been there myself for years and have only recently realized what I was doing. I would get really excited about an idea, start working on it, only work on the interesting parts (not on what actually had to come next) and then let it fizzle away as the next wave of emotion came with another idea. I would justify this cycle with the emotion dip itself, if the next step in the process was not interesting or uncomfortable, that I was my reason to leave it. Surely the next idea won't have any of those areas. The author mentions piles of lore and doing research. For me, research was basically entrepreneurial porn. My mind thought I was getting something that it really wasn't. I thought I was making progress by researching everything but in reality, I was just building piles of lore. A company I'm currently working on, with all this in mind, I've decided to do no extra research beyond what is needed in the moment. Forcing myself to steer clear of the research trap and instead only work on what is going to get me to the next point. I could go on and on about this topic, it's not talked about nearly enough. It seems like everyone has an idea for a company, app, startup, etc. Us developers sometimes roll our eyes. We think it's their idea that is bad, or that they're just following the startup hype. In reality though, none of that is true, the reason there idea isn't coming to life is because they're simply not doing it.
- junto 11y ago
  I don't know if this is just me, but I used to be full of ideas, half finished projects and several projects that I talked myself out of. Since having children, I no longer have ideas, and rarely work on anything than paid contract work. Has anyone else experienced this? I feel void of ideas.
  - marknutter 11y ago
    I have experienced exactly this, but it was in combination with also switching from freelance to full-time employment. I used to have a new idea every day back when I was freelancing and didn't have kids. Now I'm lucky if I think of one every couple of months. I actually think this is due to having less time to just explore the internet, read about interesting things, try out other products, etc. I spent a large amount of time doing that when I was freelancing and although it might seem like a waste of time on the surface, I believe it was what allowed me to connect certain dots about niche opportunities that weren't being exploited that I might not otherwise have noticed.
draw_down 11y ago
It's much easier to think about things than to make them, so this is really the normal state of affairs. Not sure you can avoid it completely
Bjartr 11y ago
One of the most damaging pieces of information I ever applied to my life was the idea that not finishing thigh things was bad or undesirable. You know why? Because the result of internalising that wasn't that I finished more things, but rather that I started fewer. I no longer got even the learning I previously did from the start of a project and the research involved etc. To this day I am still struggling to return to where I constantly started projects all over the place only to leave them unfinished. It was so, so much better that way.
pjmorris 11y ago
I've got a 'Current Task' text file, in which I write down everything I need or want to do that I'd expect I'd forget otherwise, prioritized by how soon and/or how urgently the thing needs to be done (Thank you, David Allen [0]). For example, the top of the file right now is my agenda for a meeting that's about to happen. Once the meeting's done, the agenda will go in a logbook file, and any action items will take the agenda's place. I have colossal idea debt, as measured by the size of the CurrentTask file. Scrolling past the most urgent items, I've got everything in there from ~ 'change that code' to 'Read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'' to a list of writing prompts that have moldered there for years. The nice thing, though, is that the file forms an external inventory of my plans, intents, and ideas. Putting them in there lets me focus on what needs to be done now, while removing the fear of forgetting later. I'll periodically purge, moving the things that no longer matter into the logbook. [0]'Getting Things Done', David Allen
- kbutler 11y ago
  Reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is totally worth it. And doesn't take very long...
qznc 11y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11374746 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11374746 Self-regulation of goal setting: turning free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Oettingen G1, Pak H, Schnetter K. Abstract: Fantasy realization theory states that when people contrast their fantasies about a desired future with reflections on present reality, a necessity to act is induced that leads to the activation and use of relevant expectations. Strong goal commitment arises in light of favorable expectations, and weak goal commitment arises in light of unfavorable expectations. To the contrary, when people only fantasize about a desired future or only reflect on present reality, expectancy-independent moderate goal commitment emerges. Four experiments pertaining to various life domains supported these hypotheses. Strength of goal commitment was assessed in cognitive (e.g., making plans), affective (e.g., felt attachment), and behavioral terms (e.g., effort expenditure, quality of performance). Implications for theories on goal setting and goal striving are discussed. too academic, didnt read: To act, also think about now instead of only dreaming what could be.
- seivan 11y ago
  I read somewhere that fantasizing about new features, off spins, optimizations, marketing tactics and etc would release enough dopamine that you'd eventually lose interest as the real deal wouldn't do better. I'll see if I can find it. But what you posted is interesting and seems to be a perfect fit here and my project app/game graveyard. Someone actually said that I'm not building, im playing with borrowed Lego, pretty much sums it up. I think it boils down to analysis paralysis, that's the root cause. Any anxiety, any doubt, lack of focus, and procrastination stems from that. At least arrived at after really digging.
such_a_casual 11y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tatami_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tatami_Galaxy http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm For those of you who suffer from this, don't worry! It works out in the end, and it's just part of growing up. Reading random blog posts isn't going to solve your problem with motivation. Smoke a joint and cut yourself some slack.
dandrick 11y ago
I don't see the difference between this and procrastination - there doesn't seem to be a great deal of new insight here.
- jjaredsimpson 11y ago
  procrastination is delay in doing things you don't particularly want to do but still understand are obligations. Delaying doing homework/office work/yard work. idea debt is: the struggle with creative sunk costs. Thinking in circles about something you are interested in while accomplishing no really progress in making your idea a tangible thing.
make3 11y ago
site is down
cableshaft 11y ago
While a lot of people have tons of ideas that they can only execute on a few of them, there's quite a few people have the talent to make things that don't have the deluge of ideas invading their mind every day. I think the idea people should be a little less protective of their ideas, especially the ones they know will never get made, and flesh them out just enough so others can run with it, and then put it out there somewhere. I know there's a couple sites based on this concept, but maybe it could be something where ideas could get upvoted and the more visible ones might get people on board. I don't know, sometimes I think that's what people are trying to do when they make a project open-source sometimes. But yeah, there's a bunch of junk I come up with that aren't bad ideas, but I'll never realistically invest the time to get them done, especially considering all my other projects.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  It's called crowdsourcing and I haven't seen it really work because ideas are a dime a dozen. Create. Don't think about it.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    As a programmer, I have skills to build basically anything, but I don't have any ideas for what to build. If someone gave me an idea that would really capture my imagination, I would really appreciate it. ("Yet Another Ad Network" doesn't capture my imagination)
    - graeme 11y ago
      The issue is that the ideas aren't just something that can be transmitted in a sentence. I run a business. I've had ideas, and implemented them. I have ideas for future stuff. In both cases, the ideas are hard to separate from me. I know the market, I know the users, I know what I can create, I know enough relevant tech. I could give the ideas to another domain expert, and they could probably implement them. Though they'd have their own take on things. That would change things. Some for the good, some for the better. Obviously, you can get ideas from external sources. But they'll be more powerful if they're based on your own experience or readings, so that you can bring everything to bear.
caseysoftware 11y ago
This is one of the reasons we put together "Finish Up Weekend" - http://fuweekend.com/ http://fuweekend.com/ It's a hackathon weekend when you're not allowed to start anything new. You are only allowed to bring things to finish. It's not strictly coding, we've had lawyers, screenwriters, artists, authors, and sewing projects completed. The positive peer pressure is great. When you finish something, you get to ring a bell so we can celebrate briefly.. and then get back to work. And there are no prizes, just the satisfaction of getting things done.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  Love the idea! Don't see any upcoming dates, though :(. Do you guys do anything in Chicago?
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Not yet but we're looking to spread the model. Drop me an email and I'm happy to chat details. :)
    - graeme 11y ago
      Montreal plans? I'd love to help set it up here.
      - caseysoftware 11y ago
        Email me. :) I'll be in Montreal in a few weeks for Confoo and would love to chat over a beer or coffee.
- ianamartin 11y ago
  Another vote for NYC. I've got 10 ideas that I just can't finish. Would love to spend a weekend on 1 of them, just for the sake of learning how to finish.
- ludicast 11y ago
  I love this idea. Do it in nyc sometime, please.
abrie 11y ago
The majority of this thread's comments relate personal experiences, so I might as well contribute mine as well. Nearly a decade ago I started work on a project. For eight years progress consisted of taking notes and daydreaming. I was going to write a book that would make me famous. Over the years the dream-ideas progressed from a paper book, to an iPod book, to a HTML5 book. The daydreams always kept up with the available technology. Finally, two years ago, I suddenly started working on the thing. It is a travelogue, written for Android. The difficulties of implementation were unexpected and surprising. And now that it's approaching completeness a new set of unexpected problems arise. I'd assumed that simply writing a book would be enough to sell it; but apparently a lot of marketing is required. Daydreaming has benefits, but it costs time. Edit: Having mentioned marketing; here is video screen cap of the book: https://youtu.be/yX4JTS-eIqQ https://youtu.be/yX4JTS-eIqQ
_pius 11y ago
Related: "Brain Crack" by Ze Frank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8
CM30 11y ago
I know this feeling, and it's what's held up most of my own projects. Heck, most of my one off articles too, I must have hundreds or thousands of drafts on my WordPress blog, most of which never end up going anywhere. So why is this the case? Well, a few reasons really. One is because I have an awkward tendency to never, ever be happy with something simple. Ever. So the idea ends up getting more and more complicated, and I end up giving up after realising that even a team of about 200 people with a multi billion dollar budget couldn't successfully pull it off in a reasonable timeframe. Add a touch of perfectionism, and well, you can probably guess how many of my actual projects have even been started. Most of the rest usually end halfway through after the fun part is over. But maybe I'll finally try and get some stuff done this year. Like, not starting anything new until the things I was planning to work on/have already been working on are completion.
ontouchstart 11y ago
You might want to learn something from J. C. R. Licklider: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SN--t9jXQc0 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SN--t9jXQc0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCPTgWX6a8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCPTgWX6a8
crimsonalucard 11y ago
.................................................... || | || | || | Idea | | | Debt | \ | | \ | | \ | | \ | | `. | | `b | | \ | | `. | | ' _ | | "o | | `.. | | `-. | | `-.._ | | `--.. | | `'"---............| | | '`'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Technical Debt The less you plan and think about an idea, the more technical debt you will accumulate.
runewell 11y ago
Sadly, I have been a vicitm of idea debt. As a young developer I had a grande vision of starting an online network of websites. I spent a solid month planning them all out, designing the logos and everything. Needless to say, when I showed the work to my boss he was less than impressed that I put off client work to plan our company's world domination. I still have all the logos :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/7uxj41grx7s79mg/all-logos.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/7uxj41grx7s79mg/all-logos.jpg?dl=0
flashman 11y ago
509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded, here's a mirror: http://web.archive.org/web/20160204103028/http://jessicaabel.com/2016/01/27/idea-debt/ http://web.archive.org/web/20160204103028/http://jessicaabel...

468 points by cdvonstinkpot 11y ago

This has happened to many so many times. The other situation I've had is that even when I start working on my next idea, I start getting distracted by a ton of new ones.

seivan 11y ago
Yup same here. It's hard to make decision on what to stick with and finish.
sharemywin 11y ago
I think the more I work on my idea the worse it sounds compared to the others. But, I've decided to finish the product one way or the other.

nazarewk 11y ago

Damn, those Forest Lords sound suspiciously like Malazan Book of the Fallen ;D

vog 11y ago

This is why I moved a huge portion of my TODO list into an IDEAS list. This is an outliner document (Org-mode) that contains notes on lots of different ideas. So why didn't I just delete those items? Because writing down that stuff helps me not to think about it the whole day if I don't want to. The IDEAS list grows and grows, but that's okay. I don't feel obliged to implement any of these ideas. Whenever I recall an idea, I go to that document, add some notes, and that's it. No deep research, no domain buying, no name searching. Just writing or extending on what comes to my mind, and roughly structuring it. From time to time it happens that I do want to implement one of these ideas. And in that case I have some nice, simple spec to start from. As a side note, I started to do that after I read "Writing, Briefly" from Paul Graham (http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html), which contains the following great advice: ... when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with; accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file; don't feel obliged to cover any of them; ... These points are applicable far outside the scope of writing. In that sense, my IDEAS list is the clearly separated "bottom" of my TODO list that contains the "accumulated notes". As a final note, this concept seems to be somehow related to the Not-To-Do list that some people advocate.

vkjv 11y ago
I also use the `IDEA` tag in addition to `TODO` and `FIXME`. My definitions: * IDEA: This is neat and could be helpful, but is probably okay if it never gets done. * TODO: Not doing this has some measurable ill effect. Maybe maintainability or constraining scale. * FIXME: This is a temporary work-around while finishing a feature. It should never be shipped.
- beat 11y ago
  Within our startup, there's a separate Slack channel called "Crazy ideas" and a separate column in Trello for things that are ideas rather than plans.
boothead 11y ago
This seems similar to the idea of a spark file? http://lifehacker.com/5941997/defrag-your-brain-with-a-spark-file http://lifehacker.com/5941997/defrag-your-brain-with-a-spark... edit Also do you have anything written down about using org-mode for todos and ideas?
- vog 11y ago
  > This seems similar to the idea of a spark file? Indeed! The concept of a "spark file" describes exactly what I'm doing. > Also do you have anything written down about using org-mode for todos and ideas? This is pretty basic Org-mode usage. My To-Do list is just nested headings, each with a TODO or DONE marker (Shift+Left, Shift+Right). My IDEAS list doesn't even have those markers, it is just nested headings and nested lists. The only "advanced thing" that I do is moving items via Mod+Up and Mod+Down. This is very handy, as that moves the whole subtree up and down. And I'm using the "Tab" key for folding and unfolding subtrees. Org-mode offers much more than what I'm using here. I'm not yet a power-user of Org-mode. For example, the "agenda view" might simplify a lot of what I'm doing (not for IDEAS, but for TODO, meetings, etc). But I didn't find the time to dig deeper into Org-mode yet.
  - atmoz 11y ago

z3t4 11y ago

I consider myself a very productive person ... But I just removed about 30 years of work from my todo-list, after reading this article.

elcapitan 11y ago

The concept is probably related to something you could call 'recursive idea debt' or 'recursive learning debt' in tech - when you come up with an exciting idea, and because you have no constraints you start thinking about this great new technology you would learn for that project and use. And then you would find 3 other interesting technologies or concepts related to that which you would want to learn more about. And so on.

shostack 11y ago
Definitely been hit with this. On the flip side, I usually learn something new and useful out of it. I'm an "early" programmer, so there's a ton I don't know. When I start breaking an idea I get to things like "oh, how do I have this running in the background while the user is still doing something?" That got me into Rails background workers, the Sidekiq and Foreman gems, etc. All were super useful for me to know about, and concepts that I knew existed in a vague sense, but hadn't actually gotten to yet. That said, these totally take me down a rabbit hole, and are ultimately counterproductive towards the core idea if they are distracting enough.

benjaminjosephw 11y ago

> "If… you have 'binders of lore' and no book... you’re living with serious Idea Debt." Moving from a daydream to some actual artefacts the first step _away_ from Idea Debt, not further into it. In technical terms, this could be writing a script instead of building an application or creating a spec and some documentation before writing some code. I'd argue that this is where you start to flesh-out and make real your idea. Binders of "lore" would be an amazing resource to have at hand when you actually do come to writing your book. Surely this isn't a waste of time but it's where the idea ruminates, develops and matures. If anything, it improves the quality of an idea and can help make that idea a reality.

jib 11y ago
Inventory is waste. It is one of the most insidious kinds of waste since it feels productive generating it. In reality it is waste. It being waste doesn't mean you dont need it - that's how waste builds up: you create stuff in case, or you save things in case, or you build an extra large buffer just in case. It's all done with good intentions. If one of your goals in life is to be effective you need to work to eliminate as much inventory as possible, same as the other types of waste. Overproduction, Inventory and Overprocessing are the three most insidious types of waste - they seem like good things. Why not gold plate the thing? Just add these few features in case you need them. Why not make a few extra just in case, why not save that thing that you may need later or maybe you will finish at some point. The other types of waste are more clearly negative.
- slavik81 11y ago
  Sure, inventory is waste. You need to store it, protect it and organize it. Maybe you never even end up using all of it. The thing is that without inventory, you can't build anything. Manufacturers optimize their supply chains to keep minimal inventory and reliably acquire the supplies they need just before they run out. ...but the creative supply chain is not reliable. You need a lot of inventory because good ideas might not arrive right before you need them. Fortunately, a binder full of notes is a lot easier to manage than manufactured parts for thousands of cars.
- 11y ago

the-dude 11y ago

aka Brain Crack : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8

stared 11y ago

I used to have ideas on a to-do list, but it was torturing me (especially as it takes a few orders of magnitude to come up with an idea, however elaborate, than to do it; and doing it is also a reality check - some things seam clever until you start doing it and meeting contradictions). Now it is a separate list, entitled "n-th-priority-tasks-tml.md". And I try to keep no regret for not doing things. For doing, as cheap as it may sound "just do it". As I heard from one writer "Imperfect books have one advantage: they exist". (At least for me perfectionism is the prime reason for delaying such projects.) And one advice from a friend of mine, when I was delaying (for 2 years) writing a quantum game (http://quantumgame.io http://quantumgame.io, coming this March!): "the only thing you lack is sitting on your ass and writing code". She was right. Also, one of my write ups: "If you have a great project, do moonlight. Don’t wait for better times, because they won’t come. Maybe you overstate the need of money, institutional support or social confirmation?" from http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects

vog 11y ago
> Now it is a separate list, entitled "n-th-priority-tasks-tml.md". And I try to keep no regret for not doing things. It's interesting to read that I'm not the only one doing this. See also my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11032799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11032799 I chose the name "ideas" instead of "n-th-priority-tasks" to clearly distinguish this list from actual tasks. Because they aren't. None of those entries deserves to be named "task", until one starts to get serious about them and creates a prototype. And this will happen only to a tiny fraction of those entries.
- stared 11y ago
  The title may be misleading (actually, I remember it is "n-th-priority-things.md"). I've just checked its heading (I keep this file always open) and it's "n-th prority ideas". I read your comment before posting my own. :) When it comes to their length and (what is more important) being specified, it varies a lot. From a blog post I have in mind and can write in a few hours, to things that make take months or years. I was thinking about making it public, but: - most of them are idiosyncratic and a few words stands for a long idea, - I am afraid of self-censorship (is it good enough for the public? doesn't it sound offensive?). When it comes to tasks-ideas separation, it reminds me of http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd073010s.gif http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd073010s.gif (I used to have to do bullets which were there for years - and they were causing so much pain).

danieltillett 11y ago

I love my idea debt. Not only are they a connection to my younger self, but old ideas are a rich ore to be mined for new ideas. Some of my best current ideas are old ideas that have been tweaked by experience or external change so they are now relevant. Keep working on your ideas, but make sure you are actually turning some of them into reality.

rorykoehler 11y ago
I find it amazing how many of the ideas from my vault exist in some form or other in the real world now.
- hueving 11y ago
  This happens to many people. You encounter a problem or inefficiency and think up of some software or hardware that would make it better.
- augustl 11y ago
  I love the phrase "if you're the only one with an idea, it's probably a bad idea" :)
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    There's something to be said about "idea space". most ideas hold little variance, and other people will have them. But some ideas can hold so much variance that no, nobody else in the world will even think about it.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    This could be shortened to "if you have an idea then it is probably a bad idea" since most ideas are bad.
    - rorykoehler 11y ago
      People seemed to take it as if I was bragging about how many good ideas I have had (parent comment 2 levels up). In reality what I find amazing is that most of my ideas were terrible, solutions looking for a problem, and I'm glad I didn't pursue them.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

amelius 11y ago

I wonder how this works for somebody like Elon Musk. Does he have idea debt?

rorykoehler 11y ago
Probably has tons of idea debt but he is also very single minded in what he wants to achieve so it's probably easier for him to discard ideas and only do the ones no-one else can do that will go some way towards saving humanity.

hellofunk 11y ago

Steven King has said something that I've come to support, that note/list-keeping is a great way to let bad ideas survive. He claims that a really good idea will survive in your head on its own, and a bad idea will die. And that by writing down every idea, you are polluting your landscape of possibilities by immortalizing ideas that are better left forgotten.

edwinespinosa09 11y ago
Kevin Kelly, when the creative director at Wired, said something similar about choosing which stories to write about. He would never write a story himself until a topic had been passed up by too many writers that it began to frustrate him.
marcosdumay 11y ago
My ideas directory is so full of trash that it's pointless to list it... I don't think putting stuff there is a drag to me. Anyway, I've had plenty of cases where I take notice of my original idea, and weeks later with a more worked-out solution in my head, I look at the notes and realize that my original idea was indeed much better than what I had on my head.
geezer 11y ago
I would disagree with Steven King here. Once you write down ideas, it allows you to reconsider them later in a different light, a difference context. I believe that is extremely valuable because it is crucial to analyze an idea from various perspectives before embarking on implementing it. Embarking on an idea not well thought out can be extremely expensive.
- chiaro 11y ago
  Yep, definitely. The process of writing anything out (ideas, emotions, plans) lets you separate out the roles of describing the idea vs criticising it. Trying to evaluate them in your head requires you to do both simultaneously.
wellpast 11y ago

xiaoma 11y ago

This is pretty stark contrast to James Altucher's "idea machine" concept. That's where you push yourself to come up with 10 ideas daily in order to build your "idea muscle" concept. Some days he'd come up with 10 ideas for one specific person or business. It seems a bit odd, but the guy did make millions repeatedly (after squandering 100% of his wealth, repeatedly).

radiorental 11y ago
Somewhat anecdotally... At work, our team isn't the biggest bunch of sports fans so our shoot-the-sh1t talk is primarily fantasy start-up ideas. We bounce the ideas off each other, critique them, laugh. Just in the last week; I want to create a VR game that's sync'd to your music and you hook up your exercise machine to to move through the game. (inspired by a DIY post here on HN) My boss has moved on from a device that will shut down every device in the house for family dinner onto some Medical thing he's 'working on' with a colleague. It's all good fun, creative & social.
lucaspiller 11y ago
Having ideas is easy, but actually doing something with them is different story. Ok there is minor difference between a good idea and a bad idea, but going from getting a good-enough idea to actually doing something about it, and following the project through to completion, is the hard part. Related: https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-most-ridiculous-startup-ideas-that-eventually-became-successful https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-most-ridiculous-startup-...
kazagistar 11y ago
I think they can be reconciled. Idea debt is over-valuing existing ideas. You just have a few dozen plans that you keep going over and not acting on. Coming up with a bunch of ideas would make that harder. You would have thousands and thousands if you kept them, so you just discard them while still improving the skill of having good ideas for when it counts.
- xiaoma 11y ago
  I like this line of thought. If you are an idea machine, you're actually a lot less likely to be tied to any one idea and ride it down to the bitter end. Instead, you'd realize that most ideas aren't that great and it would take a higher and higher bar to impress yourself. Maybe the dangerous thing is when ideas are in a state where maybe they're plans but you're uncertain and instead of executing on them or deciding not to you just let them accumulate and sap your attention.

cdnsteve 11y ago

The post was a very nice read and hit a personal chord for me. I'm that guy that hoards domain names for all these amazing project idea's. I've started to organize projects into Trello boards, most important ones get their own project board and details start to get hashed out. The funny thing is that I've flat out closed many boards, because I've lost interest or the idea doesn't seem to solve the problem any longer. That's OK. I think it lets me distill down the best ones for true idea investments. As long as it's full-filling and you learn something along the way, then why not?

ajuc 11y ago

IMHO the problem is talking. When you talk about your idea you receive big part of gratification for almost no effort.

xhrpost 11y ago
http://www.petershallard.com/why-telling-people-your-goals-is-a-fatal-mistake/ http://www.petershallard.com/why-telling-people-your-goals-i...
joslin01 11y ago
I fully agree. I've seen this happen with my younger self countless times. I would get excited about an idea, tell someone all about it, and then suddenly feel less motivated to work on it. Anything I'm serious about, I try not to talk about anymore as a result.

nsb1 11y ago

Thinking of this as 'debt' doesn't seem quite right to me. It's not like someone's going to come and break your kneecaps some day if you don't act on these ideas. You don't owe these ideas to anyone, and you don't have to 'pay them back'. Calling this debt is like calling the hours while we sleep and are not being paid 'income debt', or calling our front lawn 'food debt' because we haven't planted a garden there. How dare we! I'm as guilty as anyone of amassing ideas and half-baked projects in various files and/or boxes of junk around the house, but I don't think of them as debt. They're all opportunities. Some are good, some are bad, and some have been missed, but they're not debt. I happen to think that some of them have the potential to make me a lot of money should I choose to implement them, but there are no guarantees. There is nobody out there saying, "Here's a check for $20M if you implement that idea right there, and you get to keep half." 'Follow your dreams'...'Do what you love and the money will follow'...'Nothing ventured, nothing gained' these are phrases that all sound great from the other side of success, but when you have a normal life with a family and a mortgage, the decision to pursue your opportunities is not as cut and dried. Having to weigh the consequences of not earning a paycheck to pursue one of these opportunities against food on the table or missing a mortgage payment, or even just not spending those evening free-time hours with your kids changes the equation substantially.

jerf 11y ago
I think the idea is that some people experience them as debt they owe themselves. If you've never felt that way, I can see why this would not make sense to you. (No sarcasm or harshness intended; I mean that straight.) Some of us had to come to this conclusion by a harder route. For myself, I still learned it fairly early, but I do remember learning it. My natural inclination was to finish everything. As I type that, it occurs to me for the first time that I grew up in an environment where that was explicitly said to me sometimes. Even to this day, my now-retired father can be heard angsting about the projects he has not finished, and he tried his well-meaning best to pass that on to me. Perhaps this stems from the problems of leaving the physical projects he primarily works on half-done; a half-done remodeling is an ugly thing. A half-done car restoration takes up a lot of space and gets worse over time if you don't work on it as it basically rots. But creative projects have different rules. I've got at most a few hundred kilobytes of old programs lying in my sentimental directory... who cares? Who even knows? It's so tiny I tend to even forget it exists.

miguelrochefort 11y ago

I've had this vision for a revolutionary system when I was 12. I think about it every single day. Yet, my only accomplishment is thousands of pages of notes and ideas about possible use cases for this system. I haven't wrote a single line of code. I tried blogging about it, but I can't decide where to start. You can find glimpse of the idea in some of my HN/Reddit posts/comments, but that's about it. This have never felt satisfied or truly happy since. I don't know what to do next.

marcosdumay 11y ago
Thousands of pages of documentation must be how Hell feels like for engineers ;) I'd start by reducing it. Either generalize or make it less ambitious (whatever fits better your idea).
beat 11y ago
Have you read The Lean Startup? That can help. Also, TSTTCPW (the simplest thing that could possibly work). Pry a little piece of it loose. Don't think too much about which piece. Build the simplest possible version of that little piece. "Simplest" can be a tremendous challenge in itself, because scope creep and gold-plating are so easy. Part of the work will be decoupling your little piece from the rest of it. But make something that works!
wolfgke 11y ago
I'd set up a wiki to bring the notes and ideas in order.
nairboon 11y ago
I glanced briefly over your posts and it seems that you're dealing with a complex system. The trouble with those is that you can't just break it down to a simple prototype, because by simplifying it you lose exactly the properties you're interested in. Actually building it, requires a solution to a couple of hard problems, which themselve pull in even more. So the longer you work on it, the slower you make any progress and the easier it is to get lost just by the sheer range of ways to tackle it. However, somehow those complex ones are just way more interesting for myself, I pick them every time over "the simple things", but the result is, that I too can't show any visible progress, because it's not done yet and no simple prototype can show/imitate the system as a whole. If you ever discover a sound methodology for these kinds of problem, please tell me about it.

vdnkh 11y ago

I'm guilty of this, but I can't stop. What I do now is focus more more on "micro-ideas" which I can finish start to end in a day/weekend/week. Consequentially, these ideas are much harder to come by

xhrpost 11y ago

This, this is probably the biggest and yet least recognized obstruction for wannapreneurs. I know because I've been there myself for years and have only recently realized what I was doing. I would get really excited about an idea, start working on it, only work on the interesting parts (not on what actually had to come next) and then let it fizzle away as the next wave of emotion came with another idea. I would justify this cycle with the emotion dip itself, if the next step in the process was not interesting or uncomfortable, that I was my reason to leave it. Surely the next idea won't have any of those areas. The author mentions piles of lore and doing research. For me, research was basically entrepreneurial porn. My mind thought I was getting something that it really wasn't. I thought I was making progress by researching everything but in reality, I was just building piles of lore. A company I'm currently working on, with all this in mind, I've decided to do no extra research beyond what is needed in the moment. Forcing myself to steer clear of the research trap and instead only work on what is going to get me to the next point. I could go on and on about this topic, it's not talked about nearly enough. It seems like everyone has an idea for a company, app, startup, etc. Us developers sometimes roll our eyes. We think it's their idea that is bad, or that they're just following the startup hype. In reality though, none of that is true, the reason there idea isn't coming to life is because they're simply not doing it.

junto 11y ago
I don't know if this is just me, but I used to be full of ideas, half finished projects and several projects that I talked myself out of. Since having children, I no longer have ideas, and rarely work on anything than paid contract work. Has anyone else experienced this? I feel void of ideas.
- marknutter 11y ago
  I have experienced exactly this, but it was in combination with also switching from freelance to full-time employment. I used to have a new idea every day back when I was freelancing and didn't have kids. Now I'm lucky if I think of one every couple of months. I actually think this is due to having less time to just explore the internet, read about interesting things, try out other products, etc. I spent a large amount of time doing that when I was freelancing and although it might seem like a waste of time on the surface, I believe it was what allowed me to connect certain dots about niche opportunities that weren't being exploited that I might not otherwise have noticed.

draw_down 11y ago

It's much easier to think about things than to make them, so this is really the normal state of affairs. Not sure you can avoid it completely

Bjartr 11y ago

One of the most damaging pieces of information I ever applied to my life was the idea that not finishing thigh things was bad or undesirable. You know why? Because the result of internalising that wasn't that I finished more things, but rather that I started fewer. I no longer got even the learning I previously did from the start of a project and the research involved etc. To this day I am still struggling to return to where I constantly started projects all over the place only to leave them unfinished. It was so, so much better that way.

pjmorris 11y ago

I've got a 'Current Task' text file, in which I write down everything I need or want to do that I'd expect I'd forget otherwise, prioritized by how soon and/or how urgently the thing needs to be done (Thank you, David Allen [0]). For example, the top of the file right now is my agenda for a meeting that's about to happen. Once the meeting's done, the agenda will go in a logbook file, and any action items will take the agenda's place. I have colossal idea debt, as measured by the size of the CurrentTask file. Scrolling past the most urgent items, I've got everything in there from ~ 'change that code' to 'Read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'' to a list of writing prompts that have moldered there for years. The nice thing, though, is that the file forms an external inventory of my plans, intents, and ideas. Putting them in there lets me focus on what needs to be done now, while removing the fear of forgetting later. I'll periodically purge, moving the things that no longer matter into the logbook. [0]'Getting Things Done', David Allen

kbutler 11y ago
Reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is totally worth it. And doesn't take very long...

qznc 11y ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11374746 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11374746 Self-regulation of goal setting: turning free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Oettingen G1, Pak H, Schnetter K. Abstract: Fantasy realization theory states that when people contrast their fantasies about a desired future with reflections on present reality, a necessity to act is induced that leads to the activation and use of relevant expectations. Strong goal commitment arises in light of favorable expectations, and weak goal commitment arises in light of unfavorable expectations. To the contrary, when people only fantasize about a desired future or only reflect on present reality, expectancy-independent moderate goal commitment emerges. Four experiments pertaining to various life domains supported these hypotheses. Strength of goal commitment was assessed in cognitive (e.g., making plans), affective (e.g., felt attachment), and behavioral terms (e.g., effort expenditure, quality of performance). Implications for theories on goal setting and goal striving are discussed. too academic, didnt read: To act, also think about now instead of only dreaming what could be.

seivan 11y ago
I read somewhere that fantasizing about new features, off spins, optimizations, marketing tactics and etc would release enough dopamine that you'd eventually lose interest as the real deal wouldn't do better. I'll see if I can find it. But what you posted is interesting and seems to be a perfect fit here and my project app/game graveyard. Someone actually said that I'm not building, im playing with borrowed Lego, pretty much sums it up. I think it boils down to analysis paralysis, that's the root cause. Any anxiety, any doubt, lack of focus, and procrastination stems from that. At least arrived at after really digging.

such_a_casual 11y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tatami_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tatami_Galaxy http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm For those of you who suffer from this, don't worry! It works out in the end, and it's just part of growing up. Reading random blog posts isn't going to solve your problem with motivation. Smoke a joint and cut yourself some slack.

dandrick 11y ago

I don't see the difference between this and procrastination - there doesn't seem to be a great deal of new insight here.

jjaredsimpson 11y ago
procrastination is delay in doing things you don't particularly want to do but still understand are obligations. Delaying doing homework/office work/yard work. idea debt is: the struggle with creative sunk costs. Thinking in circles about something you are interested in while accomplishing no really progress in making your idea a tangible thing.

make3 11y ago

site is down

cableshaft 11y ago

While a lot of people have tons of ideas that they can only execute on a few of them, there's quite a few people have the talent to make things that don't have the deluge of ideas invading their mind every day. I think the idea people should be a little less protective of their ideas, especially the ones they know will never get made, and flesh them out just enough so others can run with it, and then put it out there somewhere. I know there's a couple sites based on this concept, but maybe it could be something where ideas could get upvoted and the more visible ones might get people on board. I don't know, sometimes I think that's what people are trying to do when they make a project open-source sometimes. But yeah, there's a bunch of junk I come up with that aren't bad ideas, but I'll never realistically invest the time to get them done, especially considering all my other projects.

bitJericho 11y ago
It's called crowdsourcing and I haven't seen it really work because ideas are a dime a dozen. Create. Don't think about it.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  As a programmer, I have skills to build basically anything, but I don't have any ideas for what to build. If someone gave me an idea that would really capture my imagination, I would really appreciate it. ("Yet Another Ad Network" doesn't capture my imagination)
  - graeme 11y ago
    The issue is that the ideas aren't just something that can be transmitted in a sentence. I run a business. I've had ideas, and implemented them. I have ideas for future stuff. In both cases, the ideas are hard to separate from me. I know the market, I know the users, I know what I can create, I know enough relevant tech. I could give the ideas to another domain expert, and they could probably implement them. Though they'd have their own take on things. That would change things. Some for the good, some for the better. Obviously, you can get ideas from external sources. But they'll be more powerful if they're based on your own experience or readings, so that you can bring everything to bear.

caseysoftware 11y ago

This is one of the reasons we put together "Finish Up Weekend" - http://fuweekend.com/ http://fuweekend.com/ It's a hackathon weekend when you're not allowed to start anything new. You are only allowed to bring things to finish. It's not strictly coding, we've had lawyers, screenwriters, artists, authors, and sewing projects completed. The positive peer pressure is great. When you finish something, you get to ring a bell so we can celebrate briefly.. and then get back to work. And there are no prizes, just the satisfaction of getting things done.

bpchaps 11y ago
Love the idea! Don't see any upcoming dates, though :(. Do you guys do anything in Chicago?
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Not yet but we're looking to spread the model. Drop me an email and I'm happy to chat details. :)
  - graeme 11y ago
    Montreal plans? I'd love to help set it up here.
    - caseysoftware 11y ago
      Email me. :) I'll be in Montreal in a few weeks for Confoo and would love to chat over a beer or coffee.
ianamartin 11y ago
Another vote for NYC. I've got 10 ideas that I just can't finish. Would love to spend a weekend on 1 of them, just for the sake of learning how to finish.
ludicast 11y ago
I love this idea. Do it in nyc sometime, please.

abrie 11y ago

The majority of this thread's comments relate personal experiences, so I might as well contribute mine as well. Nearly a decade ago I started work on a project. For eight years progress consisted of taking notes and daydreaming. I was going to write a book that would make me famous. Over the years the dream-ideas progressed from a paper book, to an iPod book, to a HTML5 book. The daydreams always kept up with the available technology. Finally, two years ago, I suddenly started working on the thing. It is a travelogue, written for Android. The difficulties of implementation were unexpected and surprising. And now that it's approaching completeness a new set of unexpected problems arise. I'd assumed that simply writing a book would be enough to sell it; but apparently a lot of marketing is required. Daydreaming has benefits, but it costs time. Edit: Having mentioned marketing; here is video screen cap of the book: https://youtu.be/yX4JTS-eIqQ https://youtu.be/yX4JTS-eIqQ

_pius 11y ago

Related: "Brain Crack" by Ze Frank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8

CM30 11y ago

I know this feeling, and it's what's held up most of my own projects. Heck, most of my one off articles too, I must have hundreds or thousands of drafts on my WordPress blog, most of which never end up going anywhere. So why is this the case? Well, a few reasons really. One is because I have an awkward tendency to never, ever be happy with something simple. Ever. So the idea ends up getting more and more complicated, and I end up giving up after realising that even a team of about 200 people with a multi billion dollar budget couldn't successfully pull it off in a reasonable timeframe. Add a touch of perfectionism, and well, you can probably guess how many of my actual projects have even been started. Most of the rest usually end halfway through after the fun part is over. But maybe I'll finally try and get some stuff done this year. Like, not starting anything new until the things I was planning to work on/have already been working on are completion.

ontouchstart 11y ago

You might want to learn something from J. C. R. Licklider: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SN--t9jXQc0 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SN--t9jXQc0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCPTgWX6a8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCPTgWX6a8

crimsonalucard 11y ago

.................................................... || | || | || | Idea | | | Debt | \ | | \ | | \ | | \ | | `. | | `b | | \ | | `. | | ' _ | | "o | | `.. | | `-. | | `-.._ | | `--.. | | `'"---............| | | '`'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Technical Debt The less you plan and think about an idea, the more technical debt you will accumulate.

runewell 11y ago

Sadly, I have been a vicitm of idea debt. As a young developer I had a grande vision of starting an online network of websites. I spent a solid month planning them all out, designing the logos and everything. Needless to say, when I showed the work to my boss he was less than impressed that I put off client work to plan our company's world domination. I still have all the logos :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/7uxj41grx7s79mg/all-logos.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/7uxj41grx7s79mg/all-logos.jpg?dl=0

flashman 11y ago

509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded, here's a mirror: http://web.archive.org/web/20160204103028/http://jessicaabel.com/2016/01/27/idea-debt/ http://web.archive.org/web/20160204103028/http://jessicaabel...