With ideas, wait before you act

A mental framework designed to save your precious time.

Editor’s note:

I’m moving to a weekly pace for these blog posts. I’m also going to try keeping them shorter, with a few longer thinkpiece-y articles mixed in there.

See you next week.

-Phil

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I’m an idea guy. I love ideas. Ideas come to me when I’m living my life... I wouldn’t be able to sit down and say, “time for some ideas!” if I wanted to. Ideas worth considering have to come to me, unrequested and out of the ether.

Stereotypically, the shower is the place for ideas. This used to be more true for me than it is now that I do cold showers. “Shower thoughts” still happen for me, but these days they mostly happen while doing chores, playing video games, and commuting on the train.

Over time, I’ve cultivated a set of rules for handling my ideas.

First, I need to write them down before I forget them. So, I open Obsidian, come up with a quick title, and start writing. My heart is usually racing at this point, because I’m excited by the idea and also because I’m legitimately scared the idea will evaporate before it reaches text format.

Some of my ideas are for blog articles that make it here later. Seriously, I’ve been saving a list of “future blog posts” for the better part of a decade. For this category of idea, I’ll try to continue confabulating onto the page for as long as time allows. The longer I write, the more raw source material I have to work with later. And then I check off “journaling” from my daily task list. I don’t check this off every day – not even close – but if I do spend 5 or 10 minutes doing this, I’ll feel good for the rest of the day.

A lot of my ideas are for creative projects, e.g. “it would be cool if I made an app where X thing happens.” That’s where the rules become really important. You see, in this enthusiastic state, I often have the urge to start working on the idea right then and there. Back in my early twenties, I fell into this trap extremely frequently, and it was a huge mistake.

The thing is, at that point, you don’t know whether your idea is any good or not. If it’s good, you’ll keep thinking about it as you go about your life.

So the rule is that I’m not allowed to act on any idea for at least one week, but preferably longer. If a decent amount of time has passed and I’m still hyped on it, only then can I start making plans for making it a reality.

I forget where I got this rule, but it’s not original. It was likely either a podcast or a Reddit comment. Regardless, this mental framework has been a godsend. Time is the only truly non-renewable resource we have, and this system saves a lot of (potentially) wasted time.

Quite frequently, I stumble upon the document later only to regard it as (as the kids say) ‘mid’. Perhaps I’ve lost enthusiasm, perhaps I’ve realized the undertaking would not be super feasible, or perhaps I just think it’s not worthy of my precious energy.

To any self-styled ‘idea person’ reading this, I implore you to enact this safeguard.

Really good ideas not only return to you, they gnaw at you. Trust me on this; you’ll thank me later.