How I Get Rid of Bad Ideas

I have a million and one ideas.

All bad.

My brain gets flooded.

There’s only one way to let them go.  It’s a process I’ve sharpened over the years.

But before I tell you my process, let me tell you a story.

Or maybe it’s not a story but a laundry list of bad ideas.

I wanted to propose to my wife at the St Louis Zoo. Outside of the monkey cages.  Some friends talked me out of it.  Good thing too, because it smelled horrible.

I wanted to be a rock star.  I had minimal musical talent.  I just wanted to write songs.  I hoped that I would naturally get better.  I didn’t.  After years of trying and dreaming.  I gave up.

I wanted to learn jiu jitsu.  This was 7 years ago.  I was too scared to start.  So now I’m a beginner and lost 7 years of possibility and improvement.

I was stopped by a guy one night while walking down the street.  He said his car ran out of gas.  I asked him where his car was.  He started leading me down a back alley.  I stopped.  Thought through it, came to my senses,  and just opened up my wallet. I handed him some money and walked the other way.

I wanted a tattoo. So I flew to Philadelphia to get the most expensive tattoo ever.

I wanted to write a book so I got up an hour early every day and wrote 500 to 1000 words.  I finished it.  Started editing it and realized it wasn’t any good.   A year of writing and tinkering and for what?  A waste.  I threw out that book and wrote a different book instead.  A devotional.  A book of spiritual struggle.

These failures just scratch the surface.  You wouldn’t have time to read all my bad ideas.  But there’s a key to dealing with bad ideas.  I have a process I use to keep from going crazy and wasting my life with bad ideas.

Okay, here’s my process.

I take a bad idea and I execute it.

But I’m not talking about killing it.  I’m talking about doing something with it.  Taking action.

I put the idea out into the world.  The real world.  Where people laugh and shake their head.  Where critics are a dime a dozen.  Where the internet trolls lick their lips and sharpen their knives.

I put it out there and I see what happens.

Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.

But EVERY SINGLE TIME…..

I learn something.

And so I guess my theory is that there really aren’t bad ideas.

Sometimes I tell friends about a business idea and I tell them that it will probably only break even.  But I still think it’s a good idea.  They don’t understand it.  That’s because, it’s not about profitability in the immediate future.  It’s about the connection it forms.  From one idea to another.  It’s the process over perfection.

Every bad idea leads to another idea.

The worse ideas are the ones that stay stuck in your head.

They run around in there and leave you with one question.

The worst question of all time….

What if?

So start getting rid of your bad ideas.

Maybe they’ll work and maybe they won’t.

Maybe they weren’t such bad ideas after all.

But what do I know?

This was just an idea I had.