Hello there, happy traveler. I’m Nikolay the Russian Guy, let me be brutally honest with you about Ideas. Capital I.
Ideas form the world around us, they say. Ideas makes our lives better, ideas add more quality to life, ideas let new things emerge, ideas drive humanity to the brighter future.
Bullshit.
There are so many dipshits out there bragging about their own or their clients’ ideas. So many extremely convincing speakers at TED or TEDx or whatever local community you have to spread ideas and talk about how ideas matter. So many people talking about Creative Thinking, Outside the Box thinking, Creative Sharing and other cool ways of Thinking. Cool stuff, indeed.
Much less people are talking about the actual Doing. Boring, hardworking Implementation of the Ideas that come to one’s mind. About sweat and tears, effort and hard labor, frustration and disappointment. No cool stuff there. None at all.
Yet if you really use your head for actual logical thinking — not for some bullshit creativity or ideas generation — it will become bloody obvious that whatever Idea comes to your mind, it will not affect anything in this world unless it is Implemented. Even highly abstract philosophical concepts have to be worked on until they are purified, proven and brought into a system. If it’s an idea of a new piece of software — it will not be there until you actually sit on your ass and implement it in a piece of software. And when it comes to affecting the actual physical world — even more work has to be done. Engineering, machinery, physical devices — you name it.
Let me emphasize it. Idea is Nothing until the Implementation is there.
Now, back to my main topic. Even Shit worth something. Nothing worth nothing. Idea by itself is Nothing. Thus, by formal logic, Idea itself doesn’t worth Shit. Proven.
Yet people love ideas. People generate ideas, people share ideas, people talk about the ideas, talk about ideas generation, talk about thinking about the ideas and about thinking about thinking about ideas generation — all of it while rarely implement anything. Do you wonder why?
Well, on one hand, people are fucking lazy. It is so much easier to impress your peers with your shiny new ideas than to actually get out there and Do something. It is so much easier to think good of yourself when you’re waving your thick long Idea around, while looking so cool, creative and clever. Not at all as hard as actually Doing something about these ideas.
On the other hand, ideas sharing is essential. Yes, don’t be surprised, I actually think ideas are essential for us as human beings. With a good enough imagination, strengthened with knowledge of the real world, you can validate ideas inside your own head. Then, if an idea passes your own internal sanity check — you can go out there and talk about it with people to validate it against their own understanding of the world. Then you can create POC or MVP and validate it against reality.
You see the difference between these two approaches? If your main intention with ideas sharing is to impress either your own self or people around you — it will be so much harder to actually create something significant. If, on the other hand, you actually want to Do something — then ideas generation and sharing is your toolset for actual real-life impact, not for growing your ego.
So, never forget what pure Ideas worth, and keep Implementation in focus. And maybe, just maybe, if everything else comes around — you can actually do something good for this world.