The best solution is to write the idea down. This will help you remember it later or develop it further. Writing helps you think. So, you might come up with more ideas while writing.
For Mac, I love the full screen mode on the iA Writer. There is no way to spend time formatting your text and no other distractions.
I really think this advice depends on the idea and the person. If I had a great idea, and more and more people kept telling me how great it was, I would be even more motivated to go out and make it happen. On the same token, if everybody told me it didn't make sense, that's the type of feedback you need to refine an idea, make it more clear, or even decide to scrap it. At some point you need some sort of outside validation or criticism
On the other end, I agree with the author it's important to spend a lot of time with your idea before you share it. 9 times out of 10 you haven't fleshed it out enough, considered all the angles before it's ready to share, and that's when an idea is really fragile
I think that its hard to just pitch a idea to somebody else...its all left to their imagination. Better to have already a prototype or something and have people play with that. The feedback will be much more valuable, then just shooting out some draft idea over a beer...you know what I mean!?
So the author is right and I really enjoyed reading this as I've got myself one of those shiny ideas and I can relate but then when he gets to the part about prototyping I get angry.
The implication in that part of the story is that if the author can get a million users with a 20minute - 12hour prototype then you should be able to as well. I think that's bullshit and it'll discourage a lot of people. If he had said "a quick prototype... And fair amount of users, enough to show you there's interest..." then it would have been perfect! Not everyone has a 12 hour block to create a prototype even if it's a simple CRUD app and some people aren't master programmers that can whip up a prototype worthy of a million users in 20 minutes but they may still be very capable of knocking something out that's of good quality to them and fast measured on their own scale. Now a lot of people reading this think the bar is set at a million users for a prototype to be worthy of further work. Even I thought that and I know better!
For example, a few months back I knocked out a quick prototype, stripped down to the core, just like the article describes. It took me a week or two to get it up though because I just didn't have time to do it all at once. That prototype with absolutely zero promotion got 40 users in 3 weeks. There was only a single link pointing to it from another orphan site that also gets no promotion from me. After reading this article I thought I was a failure. I didn't make my prototype in 20 minutes and it has nowhere near a million users. But then I remembered I'm operating on a different scale. I'm a nobody with no personal brand and no widely read blog. So my 40 users are the same as his million on my scale.
So in the end I think those details were misleading and unnecessary. I think they're unrealistic too. Either the bar is set super high for anyone with an idea or that was bragging. I mean, that's really impressive and deserves to be bragged about but when it's in a blog post meant to motivate, advise, or inspire people it only serves to set up the naive for a let down and get realists upset.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 48.0 ms ] threadsorry man
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/natari.us
For Mac, I love the full screen mode on the iA Writer. There is no way to spend time formatting your text and no other distractions.
But I guess it also depends on how your brain is wired...in my case its more visual, so sketching things help me a lot :)
On the other end, I agree with the author it's important to spend a lot of time with your idea before you share it. 9 times out of 10 you haven't fleshed it out enough, considered all the angles before it's ready to share, and that's when an idea is really fragile
I think that its hard to just pitch a idea to somebody else...its all left to their imagination. Better to have already a prototype or something and have people play with that. The feedback will be much more valuable, then just shooting out some draft idea over a beer...you know what I mean!?
The implication in that part of the story is that if the author can get a million users with a 20minute - 12hour prototype then you should be able to as well. I think that's bullshit and it'll discourage a lot of people. If he had said "a quick prototype... And fair amount of users, enough to show you there's interest..." then it would have been perfect! Not everyone has a 12 hour block to create a prototype even if it's a simple CRUD app and some people aren't master programmers that can whip up a prototype worthy of a million users in 20 minutes but they may still be very capable of knocking something out that's of good quality to them and fast measured on their own scale. Now a lot of people reading this think the bar is set at a million users for a prototype to be worthy of further work. Even I thought that and I know better!
For example, a few months back I knocked out a quick prototype, stripped down to the core, just like the article describes. It took me a week or two to get it up though because I just didn't have time to do it all at once. That prototype with absolutely zero promotion got 40 users in 3 weeks. There was only a single link pointing to it from another orphan site that also gets no promotion from me. After reading this article I thought I was a failure. I didn't make my prototype in 20 minutes and it has nowhere near a million users. But then I remembered I'm operating on a different scale. I'm a nobody with no personal brand and no widely read blog. So my 40 users are the same as his million on my scale.
So in the end I think those details were misleading and unnecessary. I think they're unrealistic too. Either the bar is set super high for anyone with an idea or that was bragging. I mean, that's really impressive and deserves to be bragged about but when it's in a blog post meant to motivate, advise, or inspire people it only serves to set up the naive for a let down and get realists upset.