Have ideas, but don’t hold onto them

As you go through your day, various ideas pop into your head. If they’re solid, holding onto them doesn’t do you any good. Get them out of your head as soon as you can, for two reasons:

First, it’s a waste of head space to hold onto them. Toss your ideas into your disposable notes system, and then ideally into your long-term trusted system. As David Allen says, “your mind is for having ideas, not holding them”. Record them, share them, use them.

Second, no one is going to steal your idea. It can be scary to share a great idea because you’re worried someone might take it, but that’s almost certainly not going to happen.

Stephanie Burns said it like this:

If you have an idea that you think is the greatest idea the world has ever heard, chances are, so has someone else. The difference that makes the difference is if you can actually carry it out and put it into existence. Raise your hand if you’ve actually stopped what you are doing to create a new business from someone else’s idea. No? It’s because starting a business takes an enormous amount of time and resources. People don’t just drop what they’re doing to steal your idea, and even if they did – they won’t do it the same way you would.

Tony Larsson said it almost the same way:

Bringing a product to market takes a huge investment of time, energy and money. This means that if a person wanted to capitalize on your idea, they would need to stop current endeavors and refocus their life on this new task.

It is highly unlikely that the person you are sharing your idea with would want to do that. Also the type of person that would completely change their life course on a whim, probably lacks the focus necessary for executing the idea in the first place.

Lastly is Howard Aiken who said:

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

Share

Get your ideas out there. Share your viewpoints, share your goals, share your thoughts on that great product you’ve been dreaming of. Getting helpful feedback is crucial to developing any idea you have, whether it’s a business concept or a new widget you want to build, so take it out of your head and see where it goes.