How to Destroy Your Perfect Idea

Have you ever known someone to hoard their ideas? You know the type, the talk a big game, walk a bit lame type. These people seem desperate for their ideas to become reality, but they never seem to do much (if anything) with them.

I know at least one such person. In fact, I know him very well, as he is me. I’m an “idea man” of the Michael Scott ilk, and no, Shoe La La still isn’t ready.

For anyone missing the reference (for shame), here’s the point: I’m the textbook definition of a wantrepreneur. A not-yet-readypreneur. Our kind manages to feel pride in our would-be offerings. We plan out go-to-market strategies never tested. And we are utterly convinced that we’re entitled to millions of dollars…someday.

Wantrepreneurship isn’t a disease, but it can sure feel like one. It sticks around precisely because there’s no reliable medicine for it. Even when successful entrepreneurs peel back the curtain to explain their trials, show how difficult things were in the beginning, oh! how they suffered…even when they retell the tale, the story ends up feeling like a linear journey towards their inevitable success.

Of course, that’s rarely how it happened. But it often feels that way because, during the struggle years, it’s hard to distinguish true failure from personal growth, and real roadblocks from imagined ones.

Why we struggle is simply hard to explain, and much harder to recognize after our desired success is achieved.

So when a founder recounts the story of their company launched from scratch, when a solopreneur tells the tale of earning millions after years of desperate attempts to avoid a traditional nine-to-five…when anyone describes how they finally “made it,” there’s simply not much more to acknowledge than the sentence or two about the trials they met on their way to where (and who) they are now. They simply don’t know how. They made it.

But this is a fundamental disservice to could-bepreneurs the world over (not to mention to the owners of the success stories themselves). We need the deep dives. We need to understand the reasons for getting stuck, everything that caused it and, yes, how to ultimately get unstuck.

Without these things, we’re left with an unfair representation of success and how to achieve it. True advantages are not discussed, at best reserved as footnotes to the “real” story.

Without these things, advice is trite, overly broad, unhelpful…bullshit.

This newsletter has always been about uncovering the details behind the things that aren’t shared, the things that ultimately halt people from working towards their dreams.

Because the real story is never how to achieve your dreams; the real story is the meaningful one, the story that helps individuals understand who they are and what they really want…everything falls into place after that.

But these things are meaningful for a reason. It takes work to find them. And there are many ways to go about this. So let’s start with one today. I’ll tell you a story about how I recently learned why I hoard myideas…and a few helpful tips to put an end to it.

. . .

I have a process. Step one is to generate an idea. This happens through the serendipitous shower or the meditative walk or journaling exercise. Then, step two: get excited about it, talk to my friends about family about it. And finally, step three: claim victory.

Of course I know I’m not done; I haven’t done anything yet. Still, I wake up each morning and go to bed each night thinking it’s about to happen, that magic dust will spur me to action, and my Perfect Idea will become reality, along with the riches and fame I so clearly deserve for having it.

I’m in a bubble. I’m “happy stupid” at this stage. Happy because I feel optimistic about the future, and stupid because I remain ignorant of the hard work necessary to actually do the thing.

Occasionally, my life circumstances will converge to a point of action. One of these ideas will break through to the surprise fourth step: doing the work.

At this step, I expect success just as I did before, but more humbly. I’m balanced; I know that tough work lies ahead, and I’m ready for it now.

But as I settle into the work, discomfort hits. It always does. And sometimes, it’s too brutal to recover from, the idea dying with the attempt.

Three weeks ago, I reached step four.

I was working on my consulting business aimed at writing for companies. I spent — wait for it — three years preparing my idea. Everything felt right, and so after years of almost-starting, I rolled up my sleeves.

There I sat, at my desk painfully crafting cold email pitches for prospective clients, and I panicked. Big time. Despite all the planning, all the notes and the mental discourses, I suddenly had nothing to say. I knew with certainty I couldn’t make it work. Worse still, I knew this wasn’t the idea for me. I was convinced of it. And convinced further that I never could make this work…nor anything else. I was no entrepreneur; it was sheer delusion to think so.

What just happened? In the span of a few hours, I went from Perfect Idea to utter failure.

If you take away the timeline, I did exactly what I was supposed to do.

But you can’t take away the timeline. Sitting on my Perfect Idea for as long as I did built up pressure. And at the first sign of doubt, the pressure overflowed and became too much to handle.

So, then: why did I sit on this idea for years?

Contrary to what the post-success entrepreneur might say, it wasn’t just a convenient excuse for inaction. I wasn’t afraid of hard work; I just didn’t want to see my Perfect Idea — and all it meant and all it represented — destroyed.

So I let it remain a mental asset. There, it couldn’t be challenged. There, I could protect it. There, I could still hope; I might never get around to achieving my goals, but I also wouldn’t be faced with acknowledging that I’m not capable of them.

We all have different tolerances for action, for creating something from nothing, for working without a clear roadmap or checklist, for challenging our supposed goals by actually working towards them. But when someone becomes accustomed to having clarity and control — not to mention ambitious dreams — it can feel necessary to perfect a plan before really working on it. At some point, though, the planning phase diverges too much from reality.

This mental planning process is so insidious because it can feel as real, and as draining, as testing the project in the real world.

On some level, I met my expectations just by thinking about and talking about my Perfect Idea. And the research bears this out: talking about your expected success often feels like success itself…ultimately making it less likely you’ll actually achieve it.

Just a few hours of work upended years of (mental) effort. I’d mistaken work in the business for work on it, despite having read The E-Myth Revisited. I was afraid to test it, but only through testing it would I be able to see the idea for what it really was, and what it needed to be for me to continue working on it (or not).

While it was a painful experience, there’s a crucial lesson to be learned from it.

Perfect Ideas have to be realized, not imagined. The longer an idea stays “perfect” prior to execution, the higher the expectations. The higher your expectations, the harder the work can feel. When you’ve invested nothing but mental energy in crafting and thinking through your Perfect Idea, it’s less likely to work out that way in the real world with real customers and real feedback.

It’s not easy to act immediately after an idea strikes, but if you’re routinely stuck at this stage, it’s essential. Unfortunately, while it’s technically the “right” advice to give — test your ideas early and cheaply; do things that don’t scale, etc. — it’s often not very useful.

I’ve read books like Noah Kagan’s book, Million Dollar Weekend, and Chris Guillibeau’s The Money Tree. And still I find it difficult to implement their advice.

If information was all we needed, as they say, we’d all have six packs and millions of dollars (or something like that).

But if information can’t help us, what can? Well, information can help us…it just has to meet us where we are.

So let’s start by setting aside any prescribed actions. The advice the pros give might be right, and their intentions are likely pure as well, but if it doesn’t help, it doesn’t help.

Right now, our goal is to simply trim the time between ideation and execution. And, ultimately, to make execution feel easy enough to continue our efforts.

How you do that starts with one slightly uncomfortable step. It should be in the sweet spot between big, hairy, audacious…and laughably small. But pay attention to the size of the task as well as the impact.

When I started working on my Perfect Idea, I built a website, talked to my friends and family, and registered the domain name. These are all relatively small tasks, but they all represent something much larger: the business as a concept itself.

If I were able to start over, I would do things differently. I would work in the business, not on it. And if I couldn’t let go of the grander ambitions, I would challenge them directly.

Here are a few steps you can take today if you have an idea you want to work on.

• X about it. Write a short, confident case for the problem you want to solve, why it’s a problem, and why you’re the right person to solve it. If you’ve got no followers, no worries; just stating the problem concisely in public is enough for now.

• Talk to yourself. If you suffer from talking-not-walking, I have some good news for you: you can get the same benefits from talking to yourself. Journaling or otherwise recording yourself works best. Pretend to have a full dialogue about your idea, why it matters, etc. Go back and forth. And it helps to imagine what someone you’d usually talk to about it would say.

• “Neg” your stupid idea. Make it feel worthless. Better yet, tell your idea not only is it not perfect, but it needs a bath, badly. It’s not worth your time. So you won’t give it any. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it can be remarkably effective…if self-talk in this domain is already quite negative, pretending to be too good for the work could help you recalibrate.

• Do nothing. Did your life change? Do you really need it to? Maybe silencing your ideas is all you really need. In my case, working harder on discipline in other areas of my life would help me feel less pressure to need one of my ideas to “hit.” Paradoxically, comfort with the life you already have is a great launching point for ambitious ventures.

The goal with any of these is to let work happen. To pull instead of push. To react “just in time,” not seek knowledge or certainty “just in case.” Action for the things you really care about just happens…you won’t be able to stop it if you tried.

Stop looking for pragmatic best practices to do something your soul isn’t ready for. People who’ve achieved what you want to don’t understand your struggle, and so can’t advise you on how to approach it.

The goal isn’t to do your thing, to make money or earn notoriety. The goal is to create a system for passion through the careful, slow process of learning to understand yourself.

Once you do, you’ll know. And from there, your dreams will finally feel possible. Until then, do as Mitch Hedberg said: “I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just gonna ask them where they’re goin’ and hook up with ‘em later.”

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