What to do with an idea?

Ideas

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

This quote is attributed to Linus Carl Pauling, a great scientist. We are going to discuss about ideas and what I am doing with them now.

I get a lot of ideas. Most of the time when I am walking, I will be thinking about so many things at once. My Mind will quickly context switch to make way for differnet kind of ideas.

Here is a downsampled log from my mind.

2025-03-17T10:32:59.647+05:30  INFO We can design a location based game by reusing this component
2025-03-17T10:32:59.649+05:30  WARN We must do it. It will make so much money omg Investors, Equity..
2025-03-17T10:32:59.651+05:30  INFO I can craete an Agent on Mobile for handling difficult and long running tasks.
2025-03-17T10:32:59.651+05:30  INFO The Agent can listen to live calls and detect scam in realtime.
2025-03-17T10:32:59.652+05:30  INFO I should just start coding the Brag doc idea over a weekend, host it and share it on linkedIn..
2025-03-17T10:32:59.659+05:30  INFO I can add a Apolocalypse view to the location game
2025-03-17T10:32:59.671+05:30  CRITICAL Obstacle detected from eye feed. Balance the body.

90 percent of the Ideas are not novel and groundbreaking. It's already been done. Sometimes, they are novel and I find no reference on the internet. I wish if there is a Genie which can read my mind and convert that idea to App or Service. It would be crazy and it might make money as well (Now, with Coder LLMs, there is a new hope).

What about the ideas which are not novel ? Are they worthless and must be wiped off from the disk? I don't think so. Just because something is done already does not mean that your idea is worthless. There might be some unique perspective in your view of things that might not exist in the already existing product or service.

There are so many instances where a new startup with an idea took over the market share from the incumbent with have similar core product with some differences.

Facebook Messenger vs Whatsapp
Instagram vs SnapChat
Instagram vs Tiktok

What do you do about your Ideas ? Is there any plan of action ? Let me share my idea handler workflow.

My earlier Workflow for Ideas

Earlier, I used to just remember the ideas until I reach a persistant store of information(a physical notebook or a note taking tool). While many ideas died becuase of context switch(mind is mostly RAM), many lucky ones got the priviledge of being written. .The idea bytes lay low in the disk block waiting for a disk seek. Little did they know that the that notebook is never opened.

Even if it is opened, at most, it gets converted to a ConsoleApp1 project which is again-not a impactful outcome for a wonderful idea.

I hesitated to share the ideas in public in order to own it exclusively. So, that no other person in the world can create this app or service. Only me. Now, since Time and energy is limited,that App or service was never finished. It was not detailed, explored, or broken down to actionable tasks. There was no way for me to get back to the idea and work on it. We all know the cliche.

Ideas are worthless, execution is everthing.

And this one.

Ideas are cheap, show me the code.

Can't resist sharing this one.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's the ability to act on them that counts.

So, I have changed the workflow now.

New Workflow

First, I have started taking notes while walking. No ideas should be missed. Second, All Ideas will go public now. I have accepted the fact that I can not convert all the ideas to something meaningful. Going to blog about it and will try to add as many details as I can about my vision and how does it solve a problem.

Here is why I think this is useful.

Chances are that a few people will read that blog. Might be possible that someone finds it interesting and offers to develop and contribute on top of it.
If I detail it, I always get some new perspective and fresh ideas and features gets added on top of it. The idea gets more refined.
My unique perspective on a product or service can influence other people. This will not happen if the idea sleeps in my local disk.
What's the loss? Nothing. I am anyway, not going to do anything with it because It is hard to do it well in limited time and there is always a new idea. Lol. who works on the old ideas?
I will be at peace that I have done whatever I can, with my idea and there is 1% chance that someone else might benefit from it.
Writing a detailed spec for a product Idea can also help showcase your product design thinking and influence potential Employers\Founders.
Don't have to struggle with blog ideas. There are always ideas waiting to be converted to a product spec or vision doc.
Let the detailed spec be present in the blog. I myself can Vibe-code it to a prototype.
As Margaret Heffernan said-For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.

Conclusion

Sharing the ideas to the world is a good thing to do. There is a little chance that people will find it useful. What's the point in hoarding it in the OneNote. Poeple are building products in public and Here I am preserving my little idea as if no one has thought about that before.

Tl;DR- Expect a detailed blog post on the ideas (prouct, service, app) as they come.

Ending this with a quote from Mae jemisson.

I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They're really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.

Thanks for reading! Would love to hear stories of people following their ideas in their spare time and converted it to a business or popular thing.