fakecreations

talking softball, from maine to san diego

Often when discussing any idea with people close to me, they mistake me when shooting them down. 

First, I need to state that I don’t take pleasure in crumbling other people’s ideas. Nor do I dislike being excited about a project. Rather the opposite. I enjoy being pumped to work with someone, if it’s their idea, and hopefully improve it. I’ve heard time and time again that I’m negative, don’t explore ideas, and other things of the sort.

Well, I’ve finally come up with an metaphor to explain why that is not the case, at all. Why I I keep shooting them down is simple:

Imagine you and friend are talking about starting a business. It’s a flying car competition. It’s a great idea, you’ll have stunts, some loops for drivers to drive into, maybe balloons you need to blow up. You go out, buy all the stuff, get a website, even hire some workers.

Then someone points out that the flying car hasn’t been invented. And all your work is lost.

Let me go back to me and my friends discussing ideas. We mostly discuss ideas for games, or software. Imagine you base your project in a premise that’s not really true. You go on, start discussing details. And after 2 hours of discussing and planning, one of you remembers that a certain problem invalidates the entire plan. And by now your train of thought will be fixed to this particular approach. You’ll try and adapt it. And while most of the times this is bad, it can work sometimes.

But if at the start of the discussion, one of you had remembered “oh, we can’t start a flying car race circuit ‘cause there aren’t any flying cars yet”, you would have saved time on an idea that would eventually be wasted.

That’s why when I’m presented with a new idea, my first instinct is to find it’s flaw(s), and see if they are in any way fixable… and go from there.

To conclude: just because someone tells you that you’re idea wont work, don’t let that stop you from having more ideas.