There Are No Good or Bad Ideas

Metaphorically, I don’t think people are like blank canvases; to me, we’re more like notebooks. Some have lines, others grids of different sizes. Some people’s pages have a space at the top for the date. I like to imagine my notebook pages (metaphorically) as well-designed as possible.

The content of the notebook, beyond the layout of the pages, comes from the decisions we make. How well-executed those decisions are defines its quality. That said, it makes me wonder: what role do ideas play in this notebook metaphor?

After months of thinking it over, I landed on this: ideas are ghosts of everything you write or draw in the notebook of your life.

Let’s drop the metaphor. We’ve all had that “amazing idea!” moment only for it to fall flat in execution. For those of us who aren’t artistically inclined, it’s like trying to draw something and totally failing.

Is your idea worse because your skills can’t bring it to life? Of course not. But there are tons of factors that shape whether an idea seems “good”: how much practice you have, the tools you use, where, when, and to whom you present it, etc.

“Bad” ideas die constantly, not because they’re bad, but because they’re poorly executed. Wrong timing, lack of research, wrong audience.

The only way to know if your idea is good or bad is after you’ve executed it with as much knowledge and skill as you can.