Why Other People’s Ideas are Better Than Yours
You're working on your new SaaS project and you open Twitter. Someone just built an AI tool that makes gas costs a problem of yesterday. You glance at the meal planning app you're developing and wonder if you shouldn't be doing something else.
Why does everyone else always have better ideas? How do your Twitter heroes manage to attract thousands of users every few months with some new golden opportunity? Do you just lack something? Don't you have what it takes?
I've asked myself this question (too) many times. But there are methods that make great ideas at least more likely. Lately, I've become more convinced about my projects - projects that make me beam with excitement and that make coding all-nighters seem like a delightful experience.
How we block our own path
First, let's see how we prevent good ideas.
If you're like me, it's only a good day if you've worked a lot. More hours worked means more hustle, which means more steps forward on the road to success. If you're not hustling, an inner voice is nagging at you; it's advising you that you should be doing something else, that you should be spending your time '"better", that what you're doing right now isn't the activity that will bring you the most in the long run. That's probably true.
So what do we do? We work. On anything. The next best project. Just keep the hustle going! Our primary motive is to stop feeling like we're wasting our time - but then do exactly that with this aimless type of work.
I'm currently coding a browser extension that summarizes articles using ChatGPT. I'm only sticking to it for a single reason: I want to "pull it off". In a few weeks, ChatGPT will get internet access. Then users can solve the problem quickly within GPT4 itself - a link to the article is sufficient, and the chatbot spits bullet points in no time. My idea is redundant. But tinkering with it feels better than doing nothing.
Through such aimless work, we don't give ourselves a chance to develop better ideas. We put on our blinders and activate "hustle mode". Once activated, there's no more room for us to wait for the creative spark. We keep working, even if it spontaneously ignites.
Monologue with the Subconscious
Suppose you meet for coffee with a creative but shy person - Mark. He has already founded and sold some great businesses. How would you act during the conversation? Would you blabber away in the 45 minutes he's blocked for you? Or would you only say a few words and ask as many questions as possible? Probably the latter. Why don't we behave this way when talking to our subconscious?
The subconscious is a powerful aspect of our mind. When you've mastered an area, you know how to solve problems or create a desired outcome. Your subconscious mind does the job for you. Imagine if you had to solve these problems purely by conscious thought. That gives you a sense of the tremendous reasoning ability inherent in your subconscious mind.
Our subconscious works on problems in the background, and then it comes up with a solution as it is available. If this happens, it feels like a flash of inspiration hits us out of nowhere.
However, we must give the subconscious mind enough room for this flash of inspiration to appear. Instead, we spend most of our time actively brainstorming or stuffing ourselves with audiobooks, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Doing so removes any chance of the subconscious mind coming up with creative ideas.
It's like you meeting Mark and giving him a 45-minute monologue about how urgently you need to solve your problems.
Purposely Running in Circles
But what compels us to be permanently in "hustle mode", driving the conscious mind to run endlessly?
One major factor is the constant influx of success stories, advice, and entrepreneurial achievements we encounter on social media, podcasts, and YouTube.
When Alex Hormozi tells me (again) that he was already a hundredfold millionaire at age 25, has perfected his sales skills, and has grown his fourth gym business, I feel the compulsion to make the same happen - as quickly as possible and just like him.
When he starts talking about supplement sales, I contemplate whether I should also sell them. All my previous ideas seem like garbage. My mind racing, I look for a way to sell products similar to protein powders in my niche. Snacks for touring musicians? Energy bars for long concerts?
It's not the problem that we are triggered to generate new ideas. It's instead that we never commit to a project. We constantly push our minds to find a better idea that will meet the criteria from the latest YouTube video, like an employer who updates requirements every two days for an unfinished task.
Where there are no problems, there is no solution
Let's look at the real world, not just the mind.
If you plunge headlong into "hustle mode", your life will probably happen in a relatively narrow space. That's the nature of it. You can only compete with life on a few fronts at a time, exploring new territories and discovering problems. If you spend much time coding your meal planning app, there's less time to play hockey.
But how can you discover what's missing in hockey if you never play? How would you develop an app idea you'd need for the gym if you don't even go there?
If your world is small, there is little inspiration and discovery. New ideas ultimately have to come from new experiences. The smaller your world becomes, the more often you relive the same daily routine with the same tasks, the smaller the inspiration for new ideas becomes.
By the way, this is not to say that a small world has only bad sides. It only means that the creative spark comes less often. If you already have the spark, turning it into reality as immersed as possible is best - the fewer distractions, the better.
More Space, Bigger World
Okay, what can we do better?
The mind needs space to breathe to help with its full potential. We also need a large enough world to draw ideas from our experiences.
We should attack from multiple angles.
Creating space to breathe
The easiest step to create space is to reduce your input. Get a social media blocker (I use ColdTurkey), and turn off YouTube for a week. Delete Instagram. Don't listen to podcasts. Just see what that does to your thought patterns. Refraining from giving your mind new directions daily will lead to better ideas.
Next, take at least 20 minutes daily to give your mind a break. Just don't solve any problems, don't scroll through your feeds, or read anything. Taking a break like this is surprisingly tricky - to this day, I have to set a timer to force myself not to look at my phone for the full 20 minutes. Alternatively, you can go for a little walk without your phone.
Then: alleviate the pressure you put on yourself.
In my twenties, I expected myself to have "achieved something" by age 30. While I achieved my past goals (becoming a live musician was probably the most significant point), I'm a workaholic anyway - the negative pressure to succeed didn't create anything positive. It just made for bad nights and stress. I probably would have climbed the live music career ladder even higher if I hadn't been overthinking as much.
Now that I want to develop my software product, I can feel the negative impact of this pressure to succeed. My next project must be a success; it must tick off all the criteria - scalability, profitability, it should help people and much more. Because of these pedantic criteria, I abandoned or didn't even start many projects. Compared to the ideal, the ideas just seemed terrible. The pressure to succeed is paralyzing. My mind can't come up with an adequate solution.
To be free of this "analysis paralysis", it is necessary to reduce the expectation, at least to such an extent that you can build some momentum. Isn't it enough to create a project that helps people? Does it really have to be a billion-dollar idea? Money is cool, but do you really need a private jet, or is making a few grand a month enough? Ultimate happiness will never come anyway, even if you're filthy rich.
Stop asking yourself to become a millionaire with the next idea. I promise you won't start playing PlayStation all day just because you let yourself off the leash a little.
Creating new sources of inspiration
I am aware that I contradict myself by talking about reducing inputs on the one hand and talking about a larger world on the other.
The difference lies in the language. By "inputs", I mean things that trigger a sense of "I must" or "I should" in you: "You must do these three things if you want to succeed!", "Do this right now, or others will overtake you!". A larger world is more likely to show you what you can do, and it will bring you new ideas 1.
So how do you enlarge your world? Here are some suggestions:
You can look at what other people are building. They may be building a product that would also be useful for your niche. Hmm, a metrics tool for cooking classes? Does something like that already exist in the concert industry? A cohort-based learning site for backend development? Would this kind of thing help people with music theory? And so on.
You can also take some time to discover and experiment with new technologies. In the age of AI, something new arrives every week - are you aware of what's going on, or do you only know about ChatGPT?
For example, I learned about text classification models on HuggingFace. How about a browser extension that classifies articles based on whether children can read them and redirects them to an appropriate page if the classification is "no"?
Or you could play around with vector embedding (super easy) and use that technology. You'll conceive some new ideas once you understand the possibilities.
Finally, it's incredible how many ideas you can get from talking to the people around you. This concept is familiar if you've read a few solopreneur books. Case in point:
I went with my friend Patrick to an equipment store near Berlin a few days ago. We had to pick up some equipment; it was about a 45-minute drive, and we chatted in the front of the car.
Patrick is the leader of a metal band that's about to break through - precisely the kind of person I want to help with my products. But how the hell am I supposed to know what this person's problems are? After all, I'm not a band leader.
Well, I ask.
"How is it going right now?", "Why isn't it working?", "Could XYZ be done better?", "What would you most like to do?". And so on 2. By the end of the conversation, I had a lot of good ideas and insights that I never thought of before (e.g., the number of monthly listeners on Spotify is crucial to whether a band can go on tour as a support act).
Best part? After the interview, I mentioned that I had discovered a lot. He replied that he hadn't even noticed that I had learned anything. Instead, he was almost embarrassed that he had only talked about his problems. People love to talk about their problems and are a gold mine of ideas. Win-win.
Just pick up the phone, make a coffee date with someone in your niche, and see what happens.