Things Of Note #19

Idea Debt and The Tyranny of Ideas

Bijay Gurung

Sep 13, 2020

Hi Friends,

I have Idea Debt. What about you?

Do you have Idea Debt too?

Idea Debt: You probably have it (and how to cure it)

Jessica Abel | 9 mins

Idea Debt is when you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be like, too much time thinking about how awesome it will be to have this thing done and in the world, too much time imagining how cool you will look, how in demand you’ll be, how much money you’ll make. And way too little time actually making the thing.

This happens to me a lot. I imagine intricate visions of doing something, of how good it would feel. And somehow doing so seems to push the idea off into a future that will never happen.

A small example: I have had the idea of listing all my poems in one place—a sort of “poetry collection”. It has taken up residence in my head for quite some time (something like 6 months or so). Yet, I haven’t actually got around to doing it. Funny thing is that it’d probably only take a couple of hours to set up a page and dump links to the poems. Easy. Yet, still…

Another is a slideshow-story (kind of) which I started but then just dumped. But not completely! In my mind, there is still a hazy thought of doing it. The idea is there, taking up space. A debt on the mind.

Is this just procrastination? (Re: ToN #16). I think not quite. These kind of projects—ones we neither get done nor let go—are perhaps only half related to procrastination.

If we put things we’d love to do in roughly a sequence as:

i) Won’t be doing.
ii) Maybe will do someday.
iii) Will definitely do. Soon enough.
iv) Doing now.

I think procrastination mostly explains why we don’t do things in (iii) effectively and quickly. For things in (ii), there are probably some other factor at play. Perhaps lack of clarity about what steps are concretely required to do it. Or an emotional blocker like being afraid of failing, of not being good enough to do it. Or plain-old creative rut.

Jessica posits Perfectionism as one of the main causes for idea debt. For instance, I might want the slideshow-story to be so perfect that internally I believe I wouldn’t be able to create it. And thus, I don’t actually start.

So, what is the solution?

Just take the jump, or skip it.

Either don’t overthink things and just get started. Or resolve to not do it at all. There is no point letting old ideas weigh us down.

Of course, this is easier said than done. For instance, when does one know when a project needs to be dropped completely vs shelved to come back to later?

Still, I think take the jump or skip it is a good advice because we lean more on the side of putting projects in a limbo.

The Tyranny of Ideas

Nadia Eghbal | 7 mins

An intriguing essay touching on many… ideas. Like: Is the world run by ideas rather than people? Are people just vessels for ideas?

People birth ideas and sometimes go to extreme lengths to nurture the idea into something that can stand on its own. But:

Once ideas find an audience, they’re hard to eradicate. Many a surprised creator has found that they’ve lost control over an idea, watching helplessly as it’s shaped and reinterpreted in ways they didn’t intend.

And furthermore, ideas can lock in their creators though the constraints of reputation.

It is enormously difficult for a successful creator to escape their own idea, because ideas need hosts to survive.
…
Ideas bond to their creators in the form of reputation that is hard to escape from.

For instance, it’s hard for a musician to veer away from the particular kind of music they produce, the idea they embody.

Nadia also notes how interestingly reputation is simultaneously becoming both more and less valuable.

The way in which we listen to music, for example, has changed. We don’t listen to entire albums as much as we used to. We don’t know as much about artists as we used to. Instead, we combine and recombine until we find precisely the sound we’re looking for, pumping god-drug into our veins, without really caring who’s behind it.

Individual musicians need reputation more than ever but at the same time, it’s the idea of their music that is valued. They are increasingly “replaceable”.

So, how can creators deal with this Tyranny of Ideas? Of being defined by the very ideas they create.

One approach is to resist definitions entirely. Keep coming up with different broad ideas. E.g. Kanye
Another approach is to compartmentalize through tools like pseudonyms, alts, etc. They are not necessarily for privacy. They can serve as holders for our different identities.

Ideas That Changed My Life

Morgan Housel | 5 mins

Awesome set of very big ideas each of which could be explored further and integrated into one’s life in multiple ways:

Everyone belongs to a tribe and underestimates how influential that tribe is on their thinking.
Everything’s been done before. The scenes change but the behaviors and outcomes don’t.
Multi-discipline learning
Self-interest can lead people to believe and justify nearly anything
Room for error is underappreciated and misunderstood.
Sustainable sources of competitive advantage
Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.

Right now, the last one has stuck with me the most, to keep in perspective that my worldview is inherently extremely biased and I need to do the work to adjust for that.

// Videos

What I learned from 100 days of rejection

Jia Jiang | 16 mins

We fear rejection, which is natural. It’s part of our evolutionary build. Getting rejected by the social group meant death. But in today’s world, the fear tends to get in our way more often than help us navigate through life.

One major way it does that is by dissuading us from asking for what we want. That’s bad because we don’t usually get what we want/need if we don’t ask for it.

In this talk, Jia shares his experience seeking out rejections in a bid to desensitize himself from the pain.

(Sometimes things didn’t go according to plan. In beautiful ways. Case in point: Olympic Doughnuts. Beautiful!)

No, not all popular music sounds the same

misteramazing | 13 mins

I am not sure when and where I got the “all popular music sound the same” impression. Probably through Youtube Comments on classic “they don’t make music like this” songs. Honestly, looks like I had internalized the idea without even thinking about it.

And so this was an interesting watch, seeing recent (as-in the last 20 years) changes in American popular music.

(Though they probably do sound a lot similar in smaller timescales and trends).

Definitely also watch: Classic Rock is the best genre.

// Tech

Top 6 List of Programming Top 10 Lists

Jeff Atwood (on Coding Horror)

I was just going through old CodingHorror posts and stumbled on this list of lists. Pretty “old” entry (2007) but a lot of it is around timeless topics. So definitely still useful and relevant.

// Stories and Poems

Mom is in Love with Randy Travis

Souvankham Thammavongsa | 15 mins

Are we looking for things to latch on to? Perhaps, we are.

A bittersweet tale.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

// Music

This week I stumbled on to Aurora and have been obsessed with her songs.

She’s beautiful to not just listen to (such an angelic voice!) but also to watch. It feels like she goes in a trance when she sings and takes us along.