AHA Moment Series — 1. The IDEA
How finding the purpose doesn’t have to be entirely on your own shoulders
Today’s AHA moment came on the bus ride home. I usually take the train, it takes about 20 minutes and it leaves me plenty of time to think of ideas in the morning, but in the afternoon, being tired after work, it’s just a refresher. The bus ride usually takes 40 minutes, so my brain had time to unwind and click.
Being a “professional job-seeker” for almost a year now, I was thinking about companies and how each have their own culture, how I need to really do my research and find the fit and what future plans should I make, since I don’t really have a start-up idea of my own (not a good one at least); or I don’t feel ready to go at it alone, anyways. And then it hit me:
I just have to find the culture and the idea I resonate with, it doesn’t have to be ones I created from scratch.
And in that moment, some pressure fell off from one side (find the idea) and I was just left with the one from the other side (find the idea-developers).
See, I’ve always believed that I need to research and observe and come up with an idea to help the world, so that I actually make a contribution to it. My biggest fear is that I’ll be one of these parasite-people, who just consumes resources, without actually generating anything in return. And while I realize how harsh this sounds, I think it’s healthy to define a purpose like this. I like the fact that my personality pushes for greatness (or at least some sort of productive activity), although I know it’s because of this that I’ve become a failed perfectionist and chronic over-thinker.
However, this idea finding strategy has challenges:
- Actually find the idea — could be after endless searching and self doubting, over-analyzing and under-networking (because you’re just so focused on the idea).
- Validate it — let is pass the 1-month-test (or 1 week), this means that you sleep on it, research and see if it makes sense to you, if you think you could dedicate yourself to it.
- Make others believe in it — And an equally hard part, as the “creator”, you have to see your idea run free, develop shades and forms you weren’t thinking about in the beginning.
- Keep working at it like it’s day 1 — It’s tempting to always chase the new, shinny thing (believe me, it takes a lot of determination on my part to stay focused on one thing and minimize distractions — and procrastination). There might also be days where you just don’t understand your affiliation or where you’re frustrated nobody fully understands or believes in what you do.
- Be comfortable with iteration & possible big shifts — This is something I learned the hard way — two heads are better than one, however they rarely have the exact same idea and your initial vision could suffer changes, but it’s the price to pay for a well rounded MVP.
So, while I’ll still have a filter for every business idea that crosses my mind & instinctively have to develop a feasibility study for it, I will also keep my mind open to the possibility of just realizing that somebody else’s idea is worthy of my time and passion.
What is your take on idea generation or affiliation?
