Yesterday I had an idea. Congratulations me, now there are two options, I can:
- Take the red pill - see how deep the rabbit hole goes
- Take the blue pill - be blissfully ignorant of whether my new idea will work
The free spirit I am, has lots of trouble with #2 because I am insatiably curious and hate myself. But I recognize that I need to learn how to do this, or I will spend my life jumping from rabbit hole to rabbit hole like a prairie dog.
My ideas usually spring from being very frustrated by something. In this case, it was having to do lots of grooming chores on GitHub, but it could be anything. I thought of a sexy idea that would use AI and I really wanted to investigate.
Okay, I would be lying if I said I didn’t investigate a little. I came across this awesome list which was pretty cool, but I remembered a repository came across recently called: “awesome cold showers”
I gave it a read and was fascinated by the idea of rationally talking yourself out of something exciting. Is this a technique I can use? So far I succeeded in talking myself out of one idea with a combination of searching for existing solutions and trying to ask myself if the net value creation of me stopping what I’m doing to make this thing is really larger than sticking with the stuff I’ve already made lots of progress with.
Another technique I’ve been using is keeping track of my shower thoughts and making sure I wait at least a week before acting on them (unless they are an epiphany that is low hanging fruit).
Anyways, only time will tell if I can make this happen, but I’m hopeful :-)