Ask HN: How do you fight self-skepticism towards your own ideas? I keep doubting my own ideas. It seems no matter what idea I come up with I find something critical in it that prevents me from its implementing. Is it my fear to fail or inability to think positive? How would I fight this or find a work around? |
Whatever you are dreaming up, you need to find a way to try it out. Until you do that, it isn't even a half baked idea. The act of putting it out there will give you critical information you can't get any other way.
It helps to start small. It helps to view it as an experiment. It helps to be curious about how other people will react, but not looking for their approval.
People can be brutal. You need to be aware of that and account for that fact and take measures to reasonably protect yourself. At the same time, you need to not take it personally. Some of it has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Some people are just assholes looking for a chance to be ugly.
In light of that, it helps to do what you can to depersonalise it. This can be done some with language. You want to ask "What do you think of this project?" rather than "What do you think of my project?"
Or don't ask. Just put it out there and watch how people react to it and interact with it. Then use what you observe to tweak it.
I come up with more ideas than anybody I know. A tiny fraction are any good. The vast majority of them are half-baked. As soon as you discover a fatal flaw (and if you're anything like me, you will more often than not), tuck the idea away in your mental file cabinet, where your subconscious will toil away for years, changing this and that, until it goes from stupid to brilliant.
I take criticism from others with a grain of salt, but my own criticism I've learned to trust.
Don't feel bad about having bad ideas, or even mostly bad ideas. It's an essential part of the process of coming up with brilliant ideas.
1. When ever you come up with an idea, write it down in a designated notebook,
2. Next make a list of why it would work and why it won't,
3. Study the pattern.
If you had made enough idea you will see how you think. You will find out if the self doubt is coming out of fear or a logical argument. Whatever the outcome, you would be in a better situation to take action. When you are ready to take action
4. Pick the idea that has highest market potential and suits your strength
5. Elaborate it into more detail by brainstorming and taking notes to strengthen you conviction.
6. Execute! Execute! Execute! Don't look back
And break down your bigger ideas into small chunks that would be fun to try.
Establish a track record of being able to try small ideas, then implement big ideas by piecing together small projects.
1. find the type of customer you want to build a business for
2. listen to their problems
3. find solutions to their problems.
4. find more customers.
What I do is list down the possible flaws of this idea. Start with the biggest, riskiest flaw and test that. Make the test as simple as possible. If it's a business assumption, you might go up to a potential client and pitch it, see how excited they are about it. Your test is simply a PowerPoint presentation.
At some point, you might need to test cash flow. In that situation you might just want to sell something without a profit, e.g. buy it from the store and sell it, before you get a warehouse full of goods.
Just keep finding small tests. If the tests are too big and expensive, find another idea.
Something that can help is introspection: write down your ideas on a piece of loose leaf paper, one idea per sheet. Put them in one of those binders with the plastic pockets in, keeping the ideas separate. As the reasons to not work on it come to you, write them down on another sheet of paper, and put that in the same pocket. Do the same with the reasons for your idea.
Be completely honest and blunt while writing. Once you've done that, put the folder away and don't think about it for a few days or weeks. When you've forgotten most of the specifics, with no emotional investment in either list of your reasons, pull out the folder re-read the description of the idea, and the reasons for and against it.
Evaluate each one, always being honest with yourself, and decide whether each is a technical, rational, personal, or emotional reason, and proceed from that analysis. (Technical, "My skills aren't there yet." Rational: "I need funding in this field." Personal: "I have a kid and can't commit the necessary time." Emotional: "I'm no good and can't do this.")
Understanding why you thought what might be a good place to start.
Keep in mind that most projects do compromise one way or another. If you're looking for an idea that's 100% good and ideally feasible, then yes, you'll probably never get to it.
That said self-skepticism is useful as well...
Knowing a system’s limitations is important. You can disclaim them to all who will listen and do your job as a cautious engineer. Perfection in a system is often not economically viable or desirable given finite delivery of said system.
It is similar to the exceptional programmer who creates the indecipherable system that implements every feature that you could ever want. That’s actually an undesirable property when you’re only selling a handful of the features.
Implementing what you need and leaving affordance for what you expect might be a future problem/requirement is often a better approach. You don’t over complicate things off the bat (and drag out deliverables), but you leave yourself in a situation to make necessary changes without much trouble.
So my advice would be to do more research. Then more research about your research. And keep going like your life depends on it.
Maybe doubting your ideas is a good thing. You’re been realistically skeptical.
Somewhere, there’s an expert who can tell you, with confidence, if your idea is good or bad, and how to improve it. So go ahead and find that person or become that person.
So I tried it, and of course it didn't work. It was still worth my time to try, though.
If you have a dozen bad ideas before breakfast, your self-skepticism is really good! It's preventing you from spending time on ideas that are flawed. On the other hand if the ideas aren't bad, you're missing good opportunities.
The problem is to have better ideas, and be better at evaluating ideas. It's not a mindset problem of being more or less pessimistic or optimistic.
Relevant PG essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
Or is it just doubting your capabilities? Otherwise many new ideas have some flaw and it takes time to find something workable. In any case it helps to work in the general direction to find solutions.
What field are you talking? It depends. Ideas about/for what kinds of thing?
You make blunders. You learn from them. You move on.
Just think about that, the only person that needs to and must believe in you is YOU.
So believe.
Ideas are 1% implementation is 99%.