I have a friend, I’m going to call Gary. He’s going to read this, so I’ll be very diplomatic – Gary is an idiot who has been thinking and talking about the same startup idea for the past 4 years.
Gary also has lived in the same apartment for the past four years, he’s been working the same job for the past four years, and his last four holidays have been the the Mediterranean sea.
Also, Gary’s computer is filled with notes about things, TV shows he’s been collecting for the past four years, half-completed projects that he occasionally works on. He does a lot of PHP, Ruby On Rails and uses Eclipse, just like he has for the past four years. His music has not changed in years.
He’s always busy continuing these projects, and never seems to finish or achieve something.
Completely unsolicited and unasked for, and probably very unappreciated, I gave Gary this advice: Delete your hard drive. That list of ideas you’ve been storing – get rid of them. Your half-finished book – wipe it off. Those movies you never saw – throw away the DVDs. The half-completed book you’re intending to finish someday – put it into storage.
All that shit you’ve been gathering up over the years, that’s stuff is cluttering your life, it’s holding you back, it’s preventing you from doing anything new. That list of startup ideas are a real blockade towards actually making a startup. That list of blog posts to write is not helping you write any more posts.
Throw all that shit out. Open source the half completed stuff and let go. If it has been this long, then you’re never going to finish it. Do something totally new, something modern. How about some Amazon SimpleDB? How about a Windows Phone 7 app? How about an app design for the iPad? How about a book of intellectual jokes?
Move on. Get new music. Get new clothes. Go somewhere new. If you want change, then don’t expect it to somehow come to you, just sit up and…change, man.
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I've heard successful people say to "just choose one and focus", rather than delete your mind and thoughts.
You just blew my mind.
You don’t know me, but (apparently) I am another Gary. I spend so much time backing up all my info that it never occurred to me to delete it and start fresh. Awesome!
Amen. I find that among my friends, there's an inverse correlation between talking about doing, and doing.
@Chris: You won't be able to just 'choose one and focus' as long as the other ideas are hanging around.
Actually, I have the same thing that Gary does. I have a huge list of ideas, domain names, and things to accomplish. It’s hard to let go of that because I feel that one of them could be my big break. There’s one I’m working on now that is slowly picking up momentum, which could possibly provide resources to work on the other ideas. So I’m torn, follow your advice and just delete and forget about them, or at least archive them into a folder that isn’t touched until the current project is finished. I think I’ll do the latter, only because I’m sure that Einstein, Jobs, and Gates had a lot of ideas that they didn’t just throw away.
I respect your blunt approach, which is most likely the most healthy, productive, and realistic approach to having so many ideas, notes, and projects laying around, but I’m a dreamer, so I’ll outsource my ideas if I can’t complete them myself. The mere possibility of seeing an idea that hatched in my conscientiousness, being produced into something that will cause even minute change in the world is infinitely gratifying.
Thanks for your approach, opinion, and contributions to this world.
Nick
"If you want change, then don't expect it to somehow come to you, just sit up and change, man."
Hell yes.
You are wrong. Gary is quite clearly NOT an idiot. He gets holidays at the Mediterranean sea. QED.
The same principle also applies to LOVE.