Ideas

Every now and again I get a question regarding what inspires me, or where I get my ideas from. I wish I had a good answer, but I don’t. Half of the time I’m trying to come up with the next “great” concept, and fail miserably. The interesting thing about it all, is when I don’t bother trying too hard anymore. In that last ditch moment something will come to me and I’ll ride it for dear life. This next bit might seem like an extreme detour, but bear with me, it’ll make sense, I promise.

I suck at bowling.

Like, bad. But I’m competitive, so at first, I really give a shit. I’ll come up with strategies, adjust them accordingly, but for some reason, the more I care, the worse I do. Usually, this happens with a group of friends, and other random people around us who definitely seem to know what they’re doing. Super fun. I stand there eating shit, and it’s painfully inescapable. Suddenly, I’ll shift from “TODAY IS THE DAY”, to “…eh….fuck it…”. Pick up the ball, skip the mental measuring, the adjusting of angles on approach, or any amount of will to make the goddamn ball hit any of the pins. Swing..release... STRIKE!

This exact thing seems to repeat itself mercilessly in many other aspects of my life. It continues to seem that the less I try, the better I do. Being that this occurs so frequently, I’ve had many opportunities to attempt at quantifying this experience. It’s still a mystery, but I gather that in the attempt in achieving “perfection”, I consume myself with the false premise and expectation that this single effort will be the one that outshines all of the rest. Even now while writing this, I have to shake the reflex to micromanage my phraseology, or conceptual pathways in order to allow the heart of this post to present itself.

Stop overthinking. Stop overthinking. For the love of god, stop overthinking.

I’m saying this for myself, just as much as I am for you. Ideas, in my mind, are free flowing. In some way, it’s almost as if they exist already within us, and once in a blue, we tune to the right frequency to catch a clear signal of it to jot down before it fades away. If we’re lucky. Sure, there are ways to almost guarantee a good idea. there are basic principles, processes, tricks, hacks you can try in order to have better odds at that next great piece. They all have their place, but more important than anything, is that you keep trying. Try. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Try better. Fail better.

Where do your ideas come from?