Developing ideas that work

Praise, the best ideas are always simple.

Ideas are everywhere. Whether big or small—depending on who's measuring—unique or stolen, local or global, startup or scale, every idea is a valid one.

Forged underneath the shower or as you turned your back to sleep after kissing him/her good night, a big majority of us seldom have "best" ideas at the most unnecessary of times. In front of a PC, biting down hard on the pen, stammering on a call, and your brain seems to Judas the heck out of you.

"Creative block again", you lament or contemplate dying—depending on the context of experience.

Few moments, days or weeks later, you've finished. Like me, you're wondering if this is the best you could've done, or it's just the bare minimum.

The finished work was simple—too obvious to you. "Anyone could've thought about this".

Our problem is not with developing ideas. It is not even with developing good ones. Good, bad, worse or best—we rate ideas based on how much we trust them.

So the question is—how do you develop ideas that you trust?

Praise, I wish I could be avant-garde and tell you "it's not that simple", but it is.

Let's paint a scenario.

Think of ideas like money.

When you store money, you keep it in a bank. The more the amount stored, the higher your confidence in the things you purchase. The lesser the amount, the more frugal you try to become.

You also know that the confidence in your purchase dwindles if the amount of the purchase equals the amount in the bank.

What's the ideal move?

Have as much money as possible.

Praise, no pressure.

I won't burden you with the task of getting it—although I'm surprised if you're relieved by this gesture.

You have a higher chance at hitting quality if there's tons to pick from. Don't try to develop a good idea, try to develop just ideas—a lot of them.

Don't try to think too hard about it, just develop.

Then sieve it through context. What do you want to achieve? What points do they connect well for you? How realistic is this?

Next? Qualify them by testing in a simulated environment.

I'll tell you how.

Talk about it with your circle. Hear their thoughts. Allow them process it within their context. Test it with a small audience, nothing big—just enough to see if you can trust your idea.

It's like a vaccine. You find lab rats before human trials.

When you finish, no matter how supposedly obvious your idea might be, you will trust it.

And during presentation or execution, your job is no longer "validating the idea", it is to make people trust it.

Every great idea was first trusted.

Ciao.

PS: This was supposed to be about why shouldn't be bitchin' about how simple your ideas were. I'm glad I didn't write that. ​ It'd have been stupid.

Anyways, stop bitchin' about how simple your ideas are—start again to learn how not to.

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