Everything we have today started as an idea. From our shoes to our shirt, from our entrance door to our backyard, from one place to another and the way we get there, everything we see and use started as someone’s idea at some point in time. Some ideas are simple and date back thousands of years (think of chairs), while others are relatively new (think of smartphones).
Ideas have an inherent compounding factor that allows them to build on each other. In the smartphone example, this idea was the aggregation of multiple technologies that already existed at the time: wireless communication devices, a camera, a touchscreen, and programming to glue it all together. But those technologies were, at the time they were created, also discrete ideas on their own that built upon other pre-existing ideas: transistors, lenses, capacitors, and digital signal processing, to name but a few.
So, what does this mean? Every idea we have had and will ever have will have come from a moment of realisation, where multiple pre-existing ideas, or versions of them, come together to form something new and unique. The concept for the idea might be unique and ground-breaking, I am not trying to take away from great discoveries and breakthroughs that have moved humanity forward throughout the centuries, but the concept will undoubtedly have come from the experiences the person or team behind it would have had up until that point.
It is the aggregation of all those experiences, summed with the pre-existing ingredients available at the time which provided that eureka moment of insight and revelation.
Ideas are very fragile
At that eureka moment, in that instant of time, the idea will have to overcome its first barrier to survival: our own self-assessment of it. Take a moment to reflect on all the ideas that did not make it past this stage. How different do you think our world and daily lives would be if we had implemented some of the ideas that never saw the light of day?
We can only hypothesise, of course, as we will never truly know, but this hypothesis can serve as a reminder of the power that comes with allowing ideas to flourish, even if for the only benefit of exploration as a means to reach a better idea. We tend to be our own worst self-critics, and the only antidote I have found so far to help combat this crippling illness is to listen and wait for my brain to say “this will likely not work because…” and stop it there and force it to ask instead “how might something like this work?”.
I believe the first barrier in all of humanity’s great achievements has been someone getting over the fact that someone else might have done something similar, or might have tried and failed, or simply believing that if they thought of it then it is likely someone else has already before and therefore if it is not done, then it is likely not doable.
The first step to give your ideas a fighting chance of survival is allowing them some space to breathe, to morph, to explore. Allow your idea to take a more defined shape of what it is and what it is not, before imparting judgement.
Feedback is a double-edged sword
The second barrier the idea needs to overcome is the judgment of others. Or, more specifically, your opinion and thoughts of the judgments of others and your perception of their meaning. ‘Are they judging my idea or are they judging me?’ That’s an example of an underlying and unconscious idea-killing thought.
The moment you link feedback given to your ideas to your own self-worth as an individual, you fall into the trap of not sharing them and letting them wither instead. After all, it is far less risky to stay quiet than it is to put yourself and your ideas out there to be criticised. But there is also less potential for growth.
Well-intentioned feedback can turn a work-in-progress idea and turn it into a great idea. Even ill-intentioned feedback, taken with the right mindset, can lead to similar results. By having people point out why things won’t work you get a chance of thinking about how to overcome those elements.
Feedback helps you remove blind spots, but only if you are willing to look at it that way. I recommend the first response you have to any kind of feedback, positive or constructive, is “tell me more”. Elaborating on positives will let you enhance the good elements and expanding on the perceived negatives will let you address them.
Notice the use of the word perceived. This is because the person giving you the feedback might not necessarily be the best one to do so. We tend to go to our friends and family first because they are the closest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the most qualified as our idea might likely be outside their area of expertise.
Coming back to the two barriers, the same idea can encounter them multiple times in different order. The process is generally not a linear one-two and then you are done, free to explore the idea to the fullest potential. In my own experience, barrier number one is the one that continually creeps up, usually when least expected.
Moving past our externally generated limitations
The advice I have given myself to overcome this barrier is to remind myself that, in the end, whatever I am doing I am doing it for myself and those I care about. In my case, feedback is always welcome, but it will go through a few filters before it is assessed for implementation.
My personal filters include some of these questions: Who is giving the feedback? Is this topic relevant to them? What can I learn from what they just said? Was it overly positive or negative? What have they personally done to back up their advice? What is their experience? You get the idea. It is all about trying to understand where the advice is coming from and with what intent. I suggest you give my set of questions a go and you will be surprised how quickly you will come up with your own set, tailored to your own priorities.
We can only try to imagine how many great ideas never saw the light of day because of these two barriers. So, what is your idea? How will you nurture and grow it? How will you overcome the next time barrier number one creeps in? What will you tell yourself to push through and allow the idea to gain some space for development? How about barrier number two? Who do you think would be the most appropriate person to give you feedback? What sort of feedback are you truly looking for? Is it about your idea or to validate yourself? What filters are you going to apply moving forward?
I will leave you with these last two, as I feel they encompass the whole intent of my message: How different would your own life be right now and moving forward if you overcame these two barriers, went for it, and explored your idea? Would you rather try and see what happens, or not try and wonder eternally about what could have been?
