I’m an obsessive reader. If you’re reading this post by following a link on Twitter or a social bookmarking site or a Google search, there’s a good chance you are, too. I don’t know about you, but I’ve become an obsessive reader because I’m obsessed with ideas. Yes. Really. Obsession. Obsession is the right word.
Obsession has led me to a very love-hate relationship with ideas. I love ideas, and they consume me.
It’s something about the age of information. Maybe that phrase should be capitalized. There has been a cultural shift we take for granted. And many of us probably draw back now and then and realize it, but the reality of it is we take it for granted.
Until I was about driving age, which is 16 in most of the U.S., real quality information was relatively hard to find. If I had a dispute with my friend about what year Alfons Mucha was born (I don’t know why I would — I just like Art Nouveau), I couldn’t look it up in Google, click on the Wikipedia entry and say, “Look, right here: 1860.”
This is practically omniscience.
And the consequences are twofold:
One, anytime I get in inkling of an idea, I can explore it to no end. Lately, my ideas revolve around my current core nature as sort of a serial entrepreneur. I want to build out business plan after business plan. So a quirky twist to a business idea comes to mind; what do I do but research the hell out of it on Google, brainstorm branding and logo ideas, check to see what kind of catchy domains I can build the branding around, wireframe the website and file it in the relative obscurity of my pile of notebooks and the dark corners of my brain because next thing you know I’m back to work on something that actually pays today (or this week, or this month) — or God forbid, a newer more exciting idea has come to mind that takes over and bumps the other forty ideas another notch down the list.
So what can I do?
Two, I have so many pieces of information floating around my head, I can’t help but watch them bump into each other and find some interesting tidbit in their synthesis. There are literally hundreds or thousands of tiny sparks that light up in my little head every day. It’s become a cliche that we deal with more information in a day than our recent ancestors came across in a year. Ideas are the building blocks for more ideas. If you’re a brainstormer like me, you’re building whatever you can out of this information faster than my nephew with a set of Legos.
Really, what can I do?
I think the answer — and this goes back to a lot of the more successful tips I’ve read about design in general lately — is that we, as thinkers, have to learn to say ‘no’ to ourselves.
Sure, let the juices flow when they taste right, but most of my obsessive contemplation is, I think, more of an outpouring from the overflow valve than practical and productive thinking.
There is a theory that dreams are a filtering process of your brain digesting the thoughts you’ve had through the day. The nonsensical bits of information combine into a plot sometimes that you remember.
If that analogy holds, then the biggest difference between dreaming and daydreaming/brainstorming is that your dreams don’t interrupt your day and steal some amount of your productive time.
If I let my random explorations of some new idea steal time from the execution of another idea that has already been pared down enough to pass my own internal approval process, I’m handicapping that and any other really good ideas I might have had because I’m letting myself dawdle in the pursuit of idea for idea’s sake, which isn’t getting me anywhere.
Or is it? Maybe by telling myself to shut up, I’m nipping the bud of my brightest idea to come.
It doesn’t matter. Perfection is pointless, and it keeps us from getting to the finish line. In my obsession with ideas, I’m running too many races at once.
Focusing, say, on the top two, three or five, I’m allowing myself the space I need to manage these ideas. I’m still juggling a few, so I’m not getting bored. But at the same time, I’m not drowing in them.
Even on a broad scale, if your medium-term plans can’t be narrowed down to a few core ideas, you might want to cut the chain that connects you so they can float around on their own for a while.
If they’re good enough, they’ll come back to you. And you’ll finally finish up the ones that keep you floating yourself.