Ideas – where do you get them from?

I’m not, really, in the position to answer the question of where to get the ideas from, but, perhaps, the question is inherently wrong.

All my so-called ideas have already been taken to be honest. I have thought of trying so many things, and I have not been able to come up with a really good idea, which means I have never been able to come up with an idea that meets all the criteria below:

  • It is unique
  • I have skills and resources to execute it
  • I can execute it quickly
  • There is no risk of having that idea stolen right away
  • And it has to be monetizable

However, looking at those 5 bullet items above, it seems it is going to be extremely hard to come up with any idea at all. Instead, this may need to be approached differently. What if the problem is that I’ve simply been trying to achieve what’s impossible to achieve?

Perhaps I don’t need to execute quickly. Or, perhaps, I can develop required skills and resources over time. Maybe the risks of the idea being stolen are really exaggerated. And, also, does it really have to be absolutely unique? With the monetization being the ultimate purpose, that last one needs to stay though.

Most importantly, perhaps it’s even the wrong place to start, since I probably need to step out of that “idea thinking” and clearly identify the problem first. What’s the problem I’m trying to solve, and, then, do I have any ideas for solving that problem? Because, it seems, so far I’ve been trying to do it the other way around, as in “here is an idea… who wants it?”

However, the problem with the problems is that not all of them can really be used to produce practical ideas. I could easily say that we might all benefit from figuring out how to generate unlimited clean energy, but it’s not something I can really work with. There are problems which I just can’t tackle. In that sense, what differentiates those problems which I can work with from all the other ones? It all comes back to the skills, resources, and time I have to execute problem-solving ideas. Ultimately, there has to be a match.

So why don’t I try something this year? Let’s bring down the scale of the problems I see to make them workable, and let’s see if I can come up with the practical ideas for solving those. And, of course, the only way to prove those ideas are practical will be to execute them and confirm they work.

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