#BeInspired Mondays with IK: Ideas, not Enough

I once read a story about a little village which had a sage that tells people if their ideas/plans will succeed or if it has been done before. (I don’t remember the details just the lessons).

People often come to him to share their plans and seek wisdom on how to go about it. The sage offers them advice and if it’s not going to be viable as is, he shares how adjustments can be made.

The story continues with a man who ostracised himself from the community so that he can have the quietness needed to get an idea no one has ever gotten and change the world and be recognised for something entirely unique.

He finally gets his groundbreaking idea, goes to the sage like a happy child who just finished his homework and wants to get his chocolate bar as reward; talks to the sage about the idea and while discussing, the sage made reference to a similar idea that has been executed by someone else earlier.

As expected, he was disappointed and went home sad, because he obviously just wasted his time away from friends and family.

Ideas are a dime a dozen but the problem is, we often times make the wrong move by waiting for the one idea that is set to turn the whole world around.

Ideas are all over the place, and unless you act on them, they’ll remain all over the place or someone else will. Don’t throw away “popular” or “stupid” ideas because they look so. You can keep them to look at them later and merge them with some other things that’ll make sense.

My most loved Steve Jobs statement is this: “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”

What an idea needs is work, and it can become reality. You don’t have to wait for any grand idea, take the seemingly small ones and begin work on them.

The little directional efforts of today add up to the big results of tomorrow. Start work.

In all these, the truth remains that it’s easier said than done. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible; it just means you need to put in more effort.

Have you ever had an idea that you threw away and later saw it somewhere else? Do you have a contribution to make? Please share!