I heard once, that to have a good ideas, you must have a lot of ideas. The reason is that most of your ideas aren't going to be good. In fact most will be pretty poor as far as from a profitability or productivity stand point. However if you have a lot of ideas, some of them, just a few will be good. Heck maybe even one or two will be really good.
I think ideas are way way too overrated. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything. For instance the idea of a hamburger and fries restaurant is nothing novel. However when the McDonald's brothers took hold of the idea and executed this idea with their vision, something magic happened.
Admittedly I am very found of day dreaming. Coming up or maybe just "listening" for ideas. I love to have a mental experiment with a handful of thoughts and see what pops out. I typically get very excited and my loquaciousness begins to leak... And of course many of these ideas are silly, but plenty of them have real potential and promise. I often find myself honing a concept over a period of time. Once the idea has been in my head for enough time for me to have some confidence that it will work, or at least not kill me or any one else, I'll begin to execute on it.
At this point in life, I feel like a bird who has been raised in a nest and is now prepared to leave his known surroundings and leap into something amazing and new. Many of my best ideas are about to be executed (and a few like international travel and language learning have being executed since January). I can't hardly wait to get started in Asheville. I feel like we are about to go on a new and fantastic adventure and much of that is due to many of these ideas I can't wait to execute.
There is no reason to dream small or to dream big. But for me, I find it much more pleasurable to dream big. I am learning how to do this while being grounded in reality.
America used to dream big. We used to be a country of fantastic visions and executions. The Golden Gate Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world. It was thought to not be possible to build. The Hoover Dam is so far beyond massive it defies understanding of construction of something so large. We sent a man to the freaking moon!!! Holy cow! We have greatness in our heritage. That heritage is still available to us. But according to a famous script, without visions the people perish. We need more men and women with fantastic ideas. And even more important we need people to take action on these wonderful plans. We have become stagnant and entitled. We must be willing to try a lot of ideas and fail with a lot of them, in order to get to the really awesome stuff. Orville and Wilbur Wright were unknown bicycle mechanics.... Who had some absolutely loopy ideas. And then they went to work building their ideas. Failing along the way to greatness.
I pray this spirit is renewed in our wonderful people in this beautiful country of ours. While traveling through the continental divide in the Rockies we passed through South Fork and went to this little grocery store and gas station known as "Rainbow Grocery" beside it was another place called "rainbow mechanics" or something of the like. I didn't give it too much thought. While getting some snacks in the store and using the restrooms Ashely stumbled across this gentlemen. Lawrence Fleming is exactly the kind of guy who embodies this wonderful spirit of lots of ideas combined with execution. He basically built a small town. Certainly he received plenty of help, but if you read the article you can see he certainly played quite the role in so much of this town. I don't know this man, and Ashley asked if he was still living and unfortunately I never will get to meet him as he passed two years ago, but I am certain that I would have throughly enjoyed this man of ideas and action.
May you be blessed with many ideas, but more so may you be blessed with the burning desire to take action in the good ideas you already have.
"The world was built by people no smarter than you." - Steve Jobs
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