Oct 22, 2019
When I get an idea to do something, like starting a side business, I usually get all excited. And I start thinking about how great it'll be. About all the problems it'll solve and how much people will love it. How I'll use the money I'm going to make to fund all the other business ideas I have.
This was my experience of trying to become an indie app developer, and it started out pretty miserably. I spent too much time building it up in my mind, instead of putting in the work to get started. I just sat there and continued to big up the ideas even more, which only made it harder to motivate myself to actually do something. As the ideas grew bigger, they also grew more daunting and challenging and eventually they got so big, that I couldn't possibly hope to achieve it, so I gave up.
Why do so many of my good ideas fall victim to this death by over enthusiasm. Why is it so hard to actually follow through on the things I dream of doing? The bigger the dream, the hard it is to take action. And this is where I need to to focus my attention. I'm Daniel Lam, and this is Inner Monkey.
How hard could it be to make a podcast? It's just someone talking into a microphone and recording it. I can do that. Great. That was easy. Lets move on to something more interesting, what does having a successful podcast get me? What kind of potential does this have?
What if it was as big as Serial? That has like a bazillion downloads, and if I can match that, I'll be set. Serial got big because they told an interesting and compelling story. If I can find something equally interesting and compelling to talk about then it's totally possible for me too! If this blows up, I might be even able to quit my job, and maybe even do this full time! Ah.. that would be so nice. OK, now I just need to find something super compelling that I can talk about it.
Of course it wasn't easy to think of anything to talk about. So, when I finally tried to record something, what I recorded, was pretty bad. I had no idea what I was doing because I didn't consider what I was capable of. I was so busy daydreaming, that when I finally sat down to recorded, what I made was the hard to follow, ramblings of a really dull guy in an echoy room. It was nowhere near what I had imagined. It was amateur hour at it's worst.
My ideas had grown out of control and were now so big that there was no way I could hope to measure up to them. So I put the ideas in a box, and tucked it away into the back of my mind.
It's natural for me to think of the end product of my ideas. That's how I evaluate their potential, after all. If an idea is promising, it has the nice benefit of providing motivation and it also helps me to anticipate problems before they become real. The thing is my inner monkey likes to turn these useful thought experiments into daydreams.
It's good to think ahead, and it's fun to daydream, especially if they're nice big dreams. But the bigger the dream gets, the further away the goal posts move. And the further away they move, the harder it'll be to get there. And when they get too far away, my inner monkey start to wonder, "what's the point of trying at all?"
Having big, long-term ideas is good, but how much is too much? What's the difference between thinking something through and letting my inner monkey daydream? Thinking about the details of something is fine, but when I start drifting towards thinking about how amazing my ideas are or prematurely patting myself on the back, that's when I get into trouble.
I find it helpful to ask myself, "what's actionable here?" and "What can I do with these thoughts?" Thinking about what will happen after I make a super awesome podcast isn't helpful. The answers might be fun, but there isn't anything useful I can do with those ideas now because in order any of that to matter, I first need to make a freaking podcast. Thinking about how great or awesome something can be, will only make facing reality that much harder.
I want to limit myself to thoughts about things that I can affect right now. So thoughts about someday, getting a million downloads isn't something I should be thinking about yet. I should start with how do I get 10 downloads, then 100, then a thousand and so on. And before I spend too much time even thinking about even a single download, I should probably start by thinking about how to make something worth downloading at all. I need to keep my thoughts in check. Are they realistic? And even if they are, is it something I should address now? Or does something else come first.
When I took this podcast out of it's box to give it another try, I decided I would limit myself to thinking about things that I can and should be doing, right now. What is the next step I need to take to get a podcast off the ground. What do I need? How can I take what I have in this moment, and make it better? I decided I would stop comparing it to some dreamed up version of I what I wish I could have, and instead compare it to what I've already done and build upon that.
Is this new iteration or version of my idea better than the last? Is it more interesting and engaging? Am I getting better? It's tempting to have my head up in the clouds, cause that doesn't take any work. But I need to remind myself to put my head down and focus on putting one foot in front of the other. If I keep taking steps in the right direction, it doesn't matter, how small or insignificant they are. Eventually I'll get where I want to go, and that's how I live the life I wanna live.