Ideas are cheap and they arrive constantly: in the shower, on a train, at three in the morning. Most of us collect them in a notebook or a notes app and then, rather sadly, never look at them again. We confuse having an idea with doing something about it, and the pleasant feeling of the first is enough to stop us from attempting the second.
Taking an idea seriously is a rarer act, and it begins with something thoroughly unglamorous: scheduling time for it. I want to describe the method I have settled on, because it has saved me a great deal of wasted effort, and has also, on a few occasions, shown me that an apparently modest idea was a very good one.
Give it a proper afternoon
An idea cannot be evaluated in the margins of a busy day. Block two uninterrupted hours, put your phone in another room, and bring the idea out into the open. Not to develop it, yet. Only to look at it properly.
Most ideas fail this first test almost immediately, which is useful. Within twenty minutes, you will often find that the idea is vaguer than it felt, or that you have been in love with its title and not its substance. That is not a waste. It is the cheapest possible way to discover it.
Write it as a claim
The first job is to turn the idea into a sentence that could be wrong. “Something about attention and work” is a mood. “People do better work when they decide the one important task before they open their email” is a claim. You can argue with it, test it, and be surprised by it.
Writing the claim also exposes how much of the idea is still fog. I find that I can often write three different versions, and that the differences between them show me what I actually believe.
Ask the hostile question
Now try, honestly, to break it. Write down the best objection a clever, sceptical person would raise, and give it a full paragraph. Not a weak objection that is easy to wave away, but the one that makes you slightly uncomfortable.
Then answer it. If you can, the idea has become sturdier. If you cannot, you have just saved yourself a month of building on a weak foundation, and you should feel pleased rather than disappointed. An idea you have not tried to destroy is only a mood.
An idea you have not tried to destroy is only a mood.
Find the smallest real test
The survivors need a test that costs little. If the idea is a product, show a rough version to three people. If it is an essay, write the first page and read it aloud. If it is a change in how you work, try it for one week and note what happens.
The aim is contact with reality as early as possible. Ideas that live only in your head are always more impressive than they turn out to be, and always more fragile.
A case study: the idea that survived
Last year I had an idea for a small weekly letter that would answer one reader question each week. It was a pleasant thought, and it had sat in my notebook for months. When I finally gave it an afternoon, I wrote the claim: “Readers would value a short, personal answer to one question more than another essay.” Then I wrote the hostile question: “Why would anyone want my answer to a stranger’s question?”
I could not answer that. It stung, and I almost abandoned it. But the discomfort turned out to be useful, because it forced me to specify what I could genuinely offer: not expertise, but a way of thinking aloud about a problem. I tested it with three friends, who each said they would read it. The idea survived, in a more modest and more honest form than the one I started with, and I am still writing it.
Ideas as a portfolio
It helps me to think of ideas as a small portfolio rather than a series of verdicts. At any moment I have a handful being actively tested, a larger number parked with dates, and a long tail I have let go. The goal is not to pursue them all, but to keep the flow honest, so the good ones are not buried and the weak ones do not eat my time.
I also try to remember that a rejected idea is not a wasted one. Almost every piece I have written contains fragments of ideas that did not work on their own. The afternoon you spent on a dead idea often yields exactly the paragraph that a living one needed.
Decide, and let go of the rest
After the afternoon, make a decision. Pursue it, park it with a date to revisit, or drop it. All three are legitimate, and the third is underused. We carry far too many half-dismissed ideas around, and the weight of them is real.
I keep a file for the parked ones, with a date beside each, and I look at it every few months. A small number have come back to life. Most have politely died, which is fine. What matters is that each one got its afternoon, and that the ones I pursue are the ones that earned it.
