Ideas are No Longer the Best Currency. Action is.
Humans have always considered ideas to be some form of currency. It is an assumption that great ideas will bring you great wealth.
I am a strong advocate that ideas are not the best currency in the 21st century. But I believe the ability to execute on ideas is the best ability anyone can have.
Inspiration:
I was reading Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo and on the back of the book, Carmine Gallo says, “Ideas are the true currency of the twenty-first century.” The book is already well over 5 years old, but this belief is still very much alive.
There is a book titled Ideas Are Your Only Currency by Rod Junkins and Huffington Post even has an article titled Great Ideas Are Our Best Currency.
This ideology has been around for a long time and will continue to stay as long as people keep pedalling the notion, it can even be negative to some people in my opinion. To people who lack an imaginative mind to come up with ideas, lacking ideas might even be deeply demotivating when they believe they have a fault with themselves.
Why are ideas so useless?
I have picked up reading again in the last year; reading over 40 books, mostly in the self-development genre. The idea that having great ideas is the ultimate path to success is really, really common across the many books I’ve read.
I completely disagree with this idea. If you’ve even been to any comments section of a YouTube channel or through Reddit, you would know that there definitely isn’t a shortage of great or even original ideas out there. There is even a phrase that goes like this, “In Silicon Valley, everyone and their mothers have a new idea for a new startup.”
On the other hand, there is a huge lack of execution on these great ideas. How many times have you had a great plan or idea that you just never started or even left half-way? I know that I have too many myself, including this blog about ten times over.
Ideas are fleeting and they come and go quickly. The problem with having ideas is that they are often an internal thought that don’t get carried out and easily forgotten. You think you have a great idea when you’re trying to fall asleep but the moment you wake up, the idea is already gone. That’s the reason why so many idea-based creators keep notebooks or idea journals on their bedside table, to capture these passing ideas.
The creative process of generating ideas should be thought of as just that, a process. The best analogy to come up with great ideas is fishing with a net. If you have a wide enough net, you’d be able to catch bigger and more fish. For us, the net is the knowledge that we personally absorb from reading or studying and so on.
When you have a larger pool of knowledge to pull from, you have the flexibility to come up with original ideas. Zach Ramelan, a YouTuber, has a great interpretation of ideas and creating something original. In one of his recent videos, titled “The Originality Formula”, he breaks down how original ideas are made. You don’t just create ideas out of thin air.
Zach Ramelan explains that ideas are a mixing of concepts that you already that greatly inspire you. He used the example of how George Lucas used three of his biggest influences to finally create Star Wars; Westerns, Flash Gordon and Science Fiction.
Pairing of Threes is the magic formula that Zach links to originality, not just great ideas. Using this same formula he can personally equate the influences to his own filmmaking style of combining his influences.
Having ideas isn’t the important part of the creation process, it starts off the project but how often do you actually start?
Execution of ideas is the most important
How many of us have ideas we want to work on? Blog post ideas we want to write? A startup plan that never came to fruition.
There is such a massive market out there for self-development books based around startups and getting your ideas off the ground. It seems that more and more of the world is catching onto the need for action instead of ideas. Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky is a great example of a book in this niche.
Hopefully it all makes sense now because it took me forever to figure this out.
“Ideas without execution no better than not having that idea.”
How to actually carry out your ideas
There is a scientific reason why getting started is so important, yet so difficult. It’s something called the Confidence Competence loop.
When you’re diving into a new hobby or a new business ideas, completely out of your comfort zone, you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. This means you lack the competence to do your tasks, while having no confidence in your non-existent abilities. Neither of your motivating factors are taking you anywhere.
Funnily enough, you can’t build confidence without competence. So the best thing to do is, getting started. To build your competence which then feeds into your confidence.
This theory is the most backwards way of thinking but it makes sense somehow. So how do you actually get things done?
Tip #1
You’ve probably heard this tip a million times but it’s one that spoke to me deeply. It’s more of a message from me to myself to get things done.
“Start before you’re ready”
You might be a naturally driven person with great ambitions but maybe on some occasions, you lack the oomph to get past the starting line. That’s exactly how I feel all the time, wanting to start a blog for years and years and finally doing it now.
You don’t need permission from some figure of authority to start your venture. You don’t need approval from your friends and family to start that business idea that’s been on your mind for years. You definitely don’t need to seek for approval from people around you to get things going.
Tip #2
Have you ever seen a baby learn to walk? They fall down dozens, if not hundreds of times before they even take their first steps. Would you tell a baby to give up when it ‘fails’ at walking?
This is the same unreasonable expectation we sometimes place on ourselves. When we start a new hobby, we have to show up perfectly and gracefully. We already have to learn all the ropes before even trying. This speaks to our fear of failure that society cultivates.
“Give yourself permission to show up imperfectly”
When you’re doing something new, you’ll never start with expertise. This means giving yourself the space to get things done and do things at your own pace. Showing up imperfectly is better than not showing up at all. It’s the action of actually doing that speeds up your learning process.
I want to end the post with these magnificent quotes from Jim Kwik. His book, Limitless, is such an easy book to get through, with tons of practical information without the jargon.
Knowledge isn’t power.
Knowledge x Action = Power
“Knowledge is power: You hear it all the time but knowledge is not power. It’s only potential power. It only becomes power when we apply it and use it. Somebody who reads a book and doesn’t apply it, they’re at no advantage over someone who’s illiterate.None of it works unless YOU work. We have to do our part. If knowing is half the battle, action is the second half of the battle.”