I want better ideas

I listened to Seth Godin doing a podcast the other day where he said, and I am paraphrasing here “I don’t decide to write a book, I write a book when the idea won’t go away.” But where do ideas come from? More importantly how do I get great ideas like Seth Godin, Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga, or any innovative archetype that you are inspire by.

I will let you in on a secret.

All of the things you wonder about, how do I lose weight, how do get rich, how do I have better ideas, how do I get smarter, how do I ship more and fear less? All of them come from hard work. You put in the hours and you get back the result. Any one of the people I mentioned above are tenacious in a manner you aren’t likely to be accustomed to because we enjoy the idea of a video going viral or making $200,000 a month off an Instagram account and shy away from the hard work. But we forget two things 1) like the flu, viral video fade 2) social platforms change.

What doesn’t change is hard work.

You want better ideas? Start with AN idea and tell someone. Do it again the next day, and the next, and the next. After three weeks of this, it will become habit (just like exercise would in the same time frame) and you will be an idea-producing machine. That isn’t to say that every idea is gold or that every idea is terrible. It is just to say that you are creating ideas and putting them out into the world. But even that, is only the start. Because anyone could do that, what makes an idea special is the execution of the idea and that is the scary part.

For people who don’t want to speak in public, public speaking or sharing an idea out loud is terrifying, but being on the hook for an idea that germinated into a product or event – that is Michael Myers with a knife in your closet scary. But once you start putting ideas out into the world, the natural progression is to turn one of them into a product or service and once you do that – you want to do it again. This is how progress happens. This is how business moves forward. This is how you empower or “pick” yourself. This is how you can change the world.

Put in the work.

Share the idea.

Execute.

Repeat.

Like shampoo. You want to have great ideas? You have to start creating an idea first and then get into the habit of shipping that idea.

The alternative of doing nothing should scare you much more than the idea of taking a risk, selling an idea, creating your moment.

What will that moment be?