How can I avoid drowning in my own ideas?
Hey everyone!
As I've attempted to sink further and further into the Indie Hacker mindset over the past few weeks by listening to podcasts, reading books, and becoming active in a few different communities, I've discovered something incredible: my idea faucet has turned on.
It's becoming easier and easier to conjure up half-baked schemes to solve my small, everyday problems with theoretical online businesses. I'm definitely happy with the progress I've made in my ability to do this, but it also raises the question that warrants this post: how am I supposed to manage all of my ideas?
Exhibit A: The Google Doc
Right now, I have a 5 page Google Doc with 21 different ideas in it. Some are relatively fleshed out with thoughts around things such as target market, the quickest path to MVP, relevant links on the web, etc; others are groupings of scattered thoughts that are barely coherent. Some are what I'd consider "good" ideas with serious (but unvalidated) potential, while others are total moonshots that are almost certainly terrible.
All in all, the document is a total mixed bag of disbanded writing; it's pretty tough to skim through, and I wonder how much value I'm actually getting out of it.
Has anyone else ever struggled with organizing and managing their ideas (whether for startups or anything else)? If so, I'd love to know that I'm not alone, or otherwise hear some suggestions about tools / processes that can make a difference for me!
Thanks in advance!
It sounds from your own writing you know the path.
Decide on a system/ the steps your idea passes from a glimpse to a fully fledged idea and put them all on that map...
Say you get these as
...
Or if you're still in too much of a mess to make it into stages, put it as a table with marks.
You can use the lean validation board to help you make sense of things that are important to figure out. Or just the layout and start page of IH.
There is no value in having that list, the only value is in pushing the ideas forward in the stages with the intent to make them work. (While actually listening to invalidation issues trying to pivot or deciding to bury the idea if they are truly unsalvagable)
Don't try too much to pick the best one, no one knows, just pick the first and move it along. (There are many ways and steps to filter them out, do note if they are personally for you...)
Thanks for the response!
What you've said about real value coming from pushing ideas forward makes perfect sense. I hadn't heard of the Lean Startup Board before now, but I just checked it out, and I love how explicitly focused it is on designing experiments around critical core assumptions.
I also think that you give sound advice about not trying too hard to pick the "best" idea. I could probably sit around forever in the analysis paralysis stage if I let myself.
You mentioned that there are many different ways to filter through a list of ideas; could you elaborate a little bit on the thought process that you follow when deciding whether or not an idea is a personal fit for you?
(Don't get caught up with timings too much, just meaning really long term)
This is what I mean by personally fitting to you, stack the situation to one that you imagine you could be happy with.
Other personal filter are make it tiny. It's way bigger than you think. (I'd write this 3 times just the same)
Don't put yourself in a situation you would have to play quick catch-up to keep things running..
Don't get into situation that put you in moral problems.
Really research key people you are tightly depending on.
Not doing anything is riskier than giving something a decent go.
Look at value creation when comparing, free stuff is just free, ads are cheap, if a person is willing to pay for a thing, that's value. (Higher up the value chain)(think of customer acquisition as costly even if you go for "free" paths)
These insights are golden, thank you so much.
Hi Jordin,
I'm not sure if this will help you are not, but I write all my ideas in a paper notebook and re-evaluate them on a regular basis. I find that re-writing my ideas and comparing them with different criteria helps to narrow it down. It is basically rewriting the list in different ways over and over again.
It is loosely based on Robert Greene's and now Ryan Holiday's system of notetaking. The physical process of organizing and reviewing the ideas is what provides the clarity. I don't think it would be as effective if it were digital.
All the best,
John
Hey jetsetcitizen!
I'm going to give that system a look. I'm a sucker for the searchability of digital notes, but there's definitely something to be said for the irreplaceable dynamic quality that comes from writing on paper.
Thank you for the insight!
I have a master document which contains a list of my ideas, usually a title and a one sentence description. Something like:
Then, if I have details I want to capture, I create another document with that title, and put details there. Sometimes, the details are just a few more sentences. Sometimes, it's pages and pages of stuff. Sometimes, there is no detail document, just an entry in the master document that I may want to revisit at a later time.
You can do this in Google docs, or a note taking app like Notion.so
Notion is great for this because you can link your master document to the detailed documents easily.
I'll typically end up sorting/shuffling the master document from time to time depending on what I view as most promising or interesting. At the bottom is an archive where I list things that I'm no longer interested in or think are bad ideas.
It's important to let ideas percolate. I've had tons of ideas that I thought were brilliant and exciting in the moment, but then a month later I think they're uninteresting or impractical.
Hope this helps!
I also have a very similar system to this! I keep a simple list of names + descriptions of ideas in Drive, and then I have a titled document for each that goes more in depth. Usually, each document is at least 2ish short paragraphs, but sometimes it is 2-3 pages with problem statement and feature sections. Really depends how excited I am about the idea at the time...
Anyway, I just wanted to add that it's very important for me to quickly share ideas with friends, as a means to filter out some sub-par concepts. I have found that it's helpful to gauge excitement level as early as possible, even from just one or two people. When I didn't do this, I used to spend too much time developing ideas that just get a "hmmmm" response in the end. But if I get an immediate "yo that would be sick," I know that I may be on to something.
Very cool, I appreciate the response! Like I mentioned below, that's such a similar process to the one I'm following currently. Do you ever feel like it gets clumsy managing a ton of documents in Drive? Or does the folder system work pretty well for you?
That's a really interesting addition RE sharing ideas with friends. I use a similar process with my wife: if her knee-jerk reaction isn't "OMG THAT'S AMAZING" right out of the gate, then the idea's chances of blowing everyone else's mind are pretty slim.
That being said, I'm midway through reading The Mom Test right now, and it's having a pretty big impact on the way I look at sharing my ideas with others.
The gist of what I've gotten so far is this: people lie to me when I pitch them my ideas because most people would rather not offend me than be brutally honest. This is definitely less true with close friends that can say "dude that totally blows" knowing it won't affect our relationship, but according to the book, the bias from not wanting to offend me is there no matter what, even if it's only affecting their reactions on a subconscious level.
Is that something that you consider/have considered when you pitch your thoughts to other people?
For sure! It's cool to know that others use a similar system. So a couple followups here.
1-- This idea system definitely gets messy, but that is not really a problem for me. My goal is to get ideas flowing and written down in a concrete way as fast as possible to not forget them. If I need to, I usually can recall the gist of these ideas or search Drive for the document for a conversation. Also, when my team and I are already working on a project like now, this system becomes more of a "future ideas" thing and don't need to take up much space in my brain.
IF you do find yourself drowning in ideas, I think someone else mentioned Notion which would be great for this. Collapsible toggles, infinite nested documents, etc. Or Airtable (which Notion also has a similar function), so you can tag ideas and sort better.
2-- When I talk to friends as a sounding board, I do keep their bias in mind. Assuming the response is a bit elevated, a negative or even mediocre response would ultimately translate to "uninterested." So if I get one of those then I know it's probably time to modify the idea or drop it. Anything else and I'll stay excited about the idea and eventually ask a few others and get their responses.
However, I'm lucky to have a couple friends (who are now my co-founders) who I can trust to give direct feedback. They have high standards and a "hmmm" from one of them is basically devastating. I think the trick is to find 1 or 2 people that you can get consistently unbiased feedback from and start there most of the time.
p.s. Need to read The Mom Test, have heard a lot about it recently.
Thanks for following up!
All of that makes perfect sense! A lot of people seem to be echoing the sentiment that the "master list" of ideas goes on the backburner once they're actively engaged in a given idea - for good reason. Thanks for the recommendations!
That's awesome. I'd imagine that our business partners might be the exception to the rule because their interests are so perfectly aligned with our own; if they lie to save face, I guess they're hurting the business and themselves in the process.
I first heard the book mentioned by @csallen on one of the IH podcasts; I haven't finished it yet, but I'd highly recommend it!
Steven, thanks so much for the response!
What you've described sounds incredibly similar to the approach that I'm currently taking, especially RE breaking out standalone documents for ideas to be fleshed out in more detail.
Do you feel like using Google Docs gets cumbersome at all after having to manage more than a small handful of linked documents and more than 20-30 ideas? You mentioned how great something like https://notion.so can be due to the ease of tying different documents together; are you using something like that now, or have you ended up sticking to standard word docs? I've played around with a couple of misc. note-taking apps in the past, but it looks like Notion might be worth another shot.
This advice is SO up my alley. I've been burned in the past by getting too caught up in the hype of a brand new idea, only to have my excitement sputter out within a few weeks after the discovery high wears off and I've already become awkwardly invested. Have you discovered any tricks for distinguishing between an idea with short-term excitement vs long-term excitement, or is giving it some time to air out the only real way?
Hey Jordin, I wasn't trying to recommend Notion in particular – I use Google docs myself for this and it works fine for me. But I know that other people prefer to use more powerful/flexible note-taking tools like Notion. I've committed to working on just one project for the last few months, so I'm sort of past the brainstorming phase though I do continue to update my idea documents now and then when I think of something new, or run across something relevant on the Internet that I want to capture.
I evaluate my ideas on two main criteria: 1) am I passionate about it, and 2) is it a good business idea?
Re: #1, I know myself pretty well so I have a good sense of what I really care about. So I'm able to quickly triage ideas that seem neat or clever, but then I quickly realize I don't really care about the underlying problem/market/customer. But I also think it's totally fine to do some market/competitive research and even some quick prototyping, during which process you may realize that the idea isn't as interesting as you originally thought.
Re #2, @csallen wrote a really great post recently on how to evaluate business ideas. I highly recommend reading it if you haven't seen it yet. https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great-business-ideas-ab51c3d51c
That said, for me the most important criteria (after I feel like there is definitely an existing, paying market for the idea) is whether I feel I can create a better/differentiated product. Often, I'll come up with an idea and after some research discover (to no surprise) that a bunch of other people have already thought of it and started businesses which solve the problem very well, and I discover I have nothing really to add or improve, and my excitement passes. But if I feel like I have a very different or unique or better approach that existing competitors are missing, then I start to really get interested. In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel has this belief that a startup idea should be 10x better than existing solutions. 10x is probably unrealistic for most indiehacker businesses, but I think the differentiation needs to be meaningful (i.e. 2x better not 20% better). Then it's time to do some customer interviews and market research to see if my differentiated approach resonates with others.
I went through the same thing you did a couple years ago – I was so excited, I basically slept only a few hours a night for 2 weeks and just brainstormed and researched like crazy during all waking hours. It'll pass, and then you'll down to the business of trying to figure out what actually works.
Good luck!
That makes perfect sense! Solid advice all around. You're the second person this week to bring up Zero to One to me, so evidence points to it being a worthwhile addition to the list I'm slowly working through. I've also already read through @csallen's post a couple of times, and it really is great.
Thanks a million for such detailed replies.
You're welcome!
Zero to One is an excellent read. Definitely geared more towards VC/startups that are striving to become unicorns. But there is still a ton of solid wisdom that applies to business in generalm including indiehackers.
Best of luck to you!
Hey @jordin_codes, I experienced the same problem :) I found a process for idea valuation and it helps me a lot to decide on what project should I work.
I shared this story in my blog: https://www.lunadio.com/blog/how-to-come-up-with-a-million-dollar-startup-idea
Let me know if it helps ;)
Hey Ivan, thanks for sharing! Love the blogpost, especially the parameter list; I subscribed!
There are a couple of things listed in your article that I'm still trying to grasp:
Generally, I think it's hard to judge a given level of competition as good or bad without measuring it relative to the size of the market being divided between competitors. Having too many competitors in a small market is certainly a bad sign, but having no competitors in a huge market could also be a bad sign (e.g. is this even a real problem?).
Do you agree? If so, what do you think the best approach is for quantifying your level of competition?
If I used this as a concrete criterion for evaluating my own ideas, I imagine that most of them would fail the test - they're all software-based, none of them have secret-sauce algorithms (or at least wouldn't in the early versions), and almost all could be copied by any decent developer worth their salt.
With that in mind, how do you typically approach deciding whether or not something is sufficiently defensible to pursue?
Lack of Competitors
Yes, I agree with what you said. You need to take in mind the size of the market and the level of competitiveness. I think you can still decide (based on quick research) on what value will have this parameter. If the market is huge with little competition it could be a bad sign but you will find out later during the idea validation. That's when you will find out whether are people interested in your product/service or not.
Defensibility
It is not the only evaluation criterium. It's one parameter out of 10. I think everything is copyable. But it is different if you can use some no-code option or template to build your product and have a know-how of software development. You might think it's easy to copy for everybody but as you said, you need to be a decent developer in the first place.
P.S. Thanks for subscribing ;)
All great points. Thank you!
All I can say is that 21 ideas are too many, flush them out validating them and start discarding if they do not fit. making one idea happen, even if it does not work, is more valuable than having a list full of dreams. Don't worry too much for a system to manage ideas as oppose to a system to start pushing them forward towards implementation. This comes from a dreamer as well.
Hey Marcelo, thanks for your input!
I'm definitely a dreamer, but I wonder in this case if there aren't at least different two segments of dreamers:
I'm painfully aware that I naturally lean much more towards the latter than the former, and so I resonate pretty well with what @stevenkkim mentioned: letting ideas simmer for awhile before immediately committing to them.
Do you lean the same way, or would you say you're the opposite? How quickly do you tend to start flushing/validating ideas after you've thought of them?
Hey Jordin,
I just read a tweet that said that writing ideas might seem dumb when you are actually doing it but once you look at them after a little while they make more sense, I do agree to let them simmer, either that or you have enough time to think about it and discard it. it happens to me all the time.
I personally start validating the idea as soon as I come up with it, mind the work that I might be doing, starting with what I can find relevant out there and then using friends, forums and social networks on the matter.
You have got to fall in love with at least one or few of your ideas (more than the others), those are the ones that must be started moving the wheels faster. if you have a long list, prioritize them.
Got it, that makes perfect sense; we sound like we're very similar in many regards.
Thanks so much for your input!