Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?

I normally end up building things that are useful to me. Storytella[0] was started for a Nanowrimo one year. I wanted something which would allow me to write at home or at work without having to worry about losing anything or having to keep files in sync. It also needed to make it really easy to change character or place names because I'm often indecisive about these things.

Sunstone[1] was built (and still needs a lot of love) because I'm a role-player and I often need to make maps. There are plenty of cartography tools available but they all seemed mediocre or required a Java install.

[0]: https://storytel.la [1]: http://sunstone.stoogoff.com/

I think another interesting question would be "where do you NOT get your inspiration" to which i 'll start: Not from techcrunch or similar blogs.

My ideas stem from conversations with friends. We'll either have chats that start with "I've been struggling with X" or "Wouldn't it be amazing if we could do Y" because those are the things we know. Occasionally we've tried to think of problems that other people will have, but without any (direct or recounted first-hand) experience of a problem working out a solution is exceptionally hard.

For me, it's mostly when I need something and I don't find a good solution. That's why I started hashtagify.me - I needed to find good hashtags to publicize a different website I had created about mortgages (that too, because I couldn't find a good one) and didn't find any good solution...

I just like to build stuff with computers, and always have since I learned some BASIC on a Commodore PET and subsequently Commodore 64.

Depends on the project. Either that it has the potential to make money, or to help/inspire people (my blog), or it allows me to learn a particular skill (doing something lately to learn Backbone and other JS technologies), or it's just plain fun for me (game development).

For me it's just curiosity. I have an idea and I want to see if it's useful to somebody.

Usually I'm more inspired when I travel

My inspiration comes from the knowledge of my mortality, literally, not in a poetic romantic artsy way. If I am not going to give up on everything and die, then I will try my hardest in learning to live. There is nothing really that I can build that matters more than caring about my life. So, I just try to amass as much skill as I possibly can, pretty much all I do is study and try to develop skill and add more skill on top of existing skill, I relate almost everything to mathematics, computer science, logic, and code, aside from trusting a small subset of individuals with my physical presence. I hug my family and talk to my cat. That's my life. Sit at computer, code, food, sleep, exercise. Maybe it seems like I have no inspiration because there is no 'push' I need to do. I just 'do that' and 'that' is mostly, more or less, what I want my life to be. I could also say 'the world' is my inspiration but that's redundant, although much more humble, but it 'was' very hard getting my mind aligned into this particular habit sequence.

This is just in general. When I find particular projects to obsess over I have elevator speeches about them that could last decades. I get really really excited, super hyper, I like to explain why 'this tool' is the best thing in the world, and promptly forget my rant after I've finished it. I don't know 'why' I do it. I just 'want' this to be my life, because it's what I am passionate about, what clicks for me, what lights up my brain, what paints pretty pictures in my head, and what I love to think about, observe, learn about, and so on. Every explanation I could give for it in words doesn't do it justice.

Ah, I just published a blog today somewhat related to this. But it's more about Startups that inspire me, personally.

It goes like this: - There are various aspects of a startup that can inspire us. Be it; good team, good culture, great product with exponential growth. But one thing that personally inspires me is the self-sustaining business model of a startup to create success."

Continued: https://medium.com/@aatifh/companies-that-inspires-me-6f382d...

All of mine successful projects was created while learning new thing. I did learn Portuguese and can't find flashcards tool that I like, so I create mine, did learn to play piano and needed some way to practice sheet reading skill, so I created tool for that.

I am also wine maker and in need of one analytical tool and found out that it costs 30k, amount I can't afford (or even justify for business my size) so I found a way to create same tool that will costs just 3k.

First category is kind of simple: I do need it and the app is simple enough I can do it in few evenings so I just do it. The second category is something I really need and will be really happy if somebody else created it and because there is nothing like that on the market I have to do it by myself (and then sell it to other winemakers who I am sure need it as well).

The problem for me is the middle ground: something I found quite interesting (say nicely formatted tabs app with timing, sounds, fretboards...) and might use it from time to time. But the novelty wears off soon and I am not desperate to have it in my life. Still these kinds of projects need sustainable effort to make it work so I just keep working less and less on it and then quit.

'Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.'

For me it always starts as a need to automate something or frustration at a software that doesn't behave like I want.

I usually say "it's no that hard to do this" then to later discover once I am knee deep in code that in fact it's especially hard to do it right.

Hmm,

It's always nice to build a tool for solving a problem. If some idea will make people life more easier, then it's great to start building that tool.

I get emotionally inspired by Art or sometimes even just block colours.

However on a logical level my inspirations come from analogies between different domains. I have one of those minds that accidentally splices ideas together when I daydream so I read a lot to give myself material.

The paintbrush is applying the language of one topic onto another: this is an early stage, later you read these thoughts back and sometimes something clicks. It occasionally leads to ideas that have some game-theoretical economic value. Other times they remain poetic/fun.

The problem with inspiration is that it only leads you part of the way. Convincing yourself to forgo other interests to pursue them is a whole other thing. Additionally not all surface-level "good" ideas are economically viable today or (if they are) within my reach.

Practical ideas are a whole other deal. You need to empathise with your own and others pain. Personally I think it's often not worth creating these however unless they are partnered with ideas that can be executed to significantly alter the underlying economic reality.

I am interested in granular ideas and insights that can be used in the pursuit of better products. Not just the idea that "a product to do X should exist", but the ideas that would allow it to work well.

I would love to meet and discuss thoughts like these with others that live or work around Central London by the way?

I get my inspiration from other peoples work, and in my case mostly Github.

Jimmy DiResta. You can laugh as it's not exactly related to CS but you can't help yourself when you watch him. You wanna build stuff, it doesn't matter what. He really makes you want to just build stuff... to solve a real problem... with the right tools for the job... the way you know how... and be proud of building it.

The student loan debt crisis we are dealing with as a country. It's just starting. Figure we are in the 3rd inning. Want to figure out how to dampen the blow it will have on middle class entrepreneurs.

Whenever something else sucks.

I have never built anything when there is already something acceptable available. That's probably why I've never spent much time building low level stuff like platforms, utilities, and tools. People way smarter than me have that covered really well already.

But when a customer needs something and examining their options causes me to vomit, I am highly motivated. "I can do way better than that!"

What inspires me is fear. Fear that I'm stuck in a dead-end job that won't give me any options or marketable skills. That I won't be able to pay for my children's education, that I'll be a burden to them when I retire. And most of all, the fear that if I get hit by a bus today I leave them with nothing.

That drives me to work harder, keep improving my skills and stay on the lookout for projects that will make me valuable on the developer market and maybe bring in revenue.

1. Real world issues that I personally encountered: hard to find a flat to rent? → build a zen process around this individualistic race, disappointed with your city lifestyle? → build the city of tomorrow, difficulty to learn how to sing b/c you have a visual memory? → build an app to visualize your voice, etc.

2. Whatever gets me in a state of free association:

- Semi-randomly browsing HN/wikipedia/the-web while learning new concepts got me a fair number of new ideas.

- Running or any physical activity (preferably outdoors) that occupies my body while not requiring a lot of thinking so that my mind is free to wander.

Now those are only ideas in my head. Right now I obviously can't launch three businesses and learn many hobbies while rebuilding my city, wish I could, I'm already committed to other things. So I write them down for later when I'll be asking myself "what's next?" otherwise I can't focus on the task at hand.

I have to enable "ideas mode" and I when I do start looking at my day to day life with more critical and objective eyes. I run a software company too, so I'm not short of people throwing ideas at me!

Here's a couple of examples, one business focussed and one more personal.

Story one...

A few years ago one of my developers quit because I forgot their job review. Bad times followed as we were busy and replacing a good developer is not easy.

Once the dust had settled I looked for a web app to ensure this problem never occurred again. I couldn't find anything, and so my company built a HR app to simplify our HR processes and automate the heck out of them. A couple of years later www.staffsquared.com was born. So this was us building a tool to scratch our own itch, which is a common approach.

Story two...

My other half is obsessed about checking her bank account. She logs in twice a day to see what's happening and to ensure that her card(s) haven't been used. She's worried about identify theft. Thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that it'd be really cool to have a text message service that alerted my partner to any "strange" transactions. Some banks in the US provide this, but in the UK it's not a thing. I haven't had the chance to pursue this idea any further just yet.

So my approach is scratching a personal or professional itch. My co-founder and CTO at my software company takes an entirely different approach. He likes to build things because he gets a kick out of making cool technical shit work. I can't roll like that, I have to have an understanding of the problem and how my proposed solution will fix it. It needs to address a pain. I am technical, but I don't get a kick out of building things for the sake of building them to learn, experiment etc.

Lives of ignorant - those who have never tried to study or even read.

I do Morning Pages[0], and then the inspiration comes automatically. I've more than plenty information sources shouting at me to be inspired by, but I need a clear head to be able to turn it into concrete ideas. I find that the clearer my head, the more creative I get. So Morning Pages.

[0] http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/

My inspiration for all of my work is a fear that no one else is going to look at the things I'm looking at, think about the things I'm thinking about or discover the answers I'm trying to find. This is less ego-maniacal than it sounds (I think), there just aren't many people pursuing my particular passion, so I genuinely feel like I need to do everything with it I possibly can before I die.

This is a great talk from somebody at Ideo about finding inspiration. If I recall the idea was to try to look at things like a child.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/newsletter_iphone.html?material=...