Do your ideas suck?

Imagine with me for a moment you are George Lucas. You are leaning back on your expensive black executive chair staring at a picture of yourself holding a light saber wondering, ‘How can I make something that good again.’ You notice a picture of a duck on your desk and it hits you. THAT’S IT! You need a duck that’s a superhero. And so the world was forced to endure Howard the Duck. Are your ideas like these? When I wrote recently on 4 ways to come up with cool ideas I thought how do we know if we have suckful ideas?

How to know your ideas suck

The main way you can tell is not because they don’t work… ignore that. Many good ideas don’t work. That’s another post for another day. There are two things I think that can give you a clue. The first thing is you have no critical voice. I love my wife because she is 100% pessimistic. You would never meet someone who is more negative that she is. Whenever I am about to do something I ask her: What’s wrong with this? She usually answers with something I didn’t think of because I am very optimistic (utopia nutters). I only see what’s good in most things I am doing. If you have no critic there is no way of telling how much your ideas suck. Find a critic. They are worth their weight in gold.

This may confuse you but you really know your ideas suck if nobody is willing to criticise them. I think most people don’t like hurting other people. If you have written a book and people look at it and say ‘that’s good’. Keep searching. Ask why is it good? Why is it bad? Why does it work so well? I have to call out blogs on this one. I don’t know how many times I have read a blog post and there are 75 comments of people saying ,’wow what a great post.’ Not one (if you’re lucky) voice that is looking for what’s wrong. You need that. I have had it on this blog and it always makes me think. Sure, I don’t like it at first but after I have taken out my frustration on the Wii I feel better.

What you can do to stop your ideas from sucking

There are many ideas you can use to stop sucking. The first that comes to mind is to create a mastermind group. They say iron sharpens iron. If you can find two others or more than I recommend using them as a bouncing board. I have three people in my life that I run things past before I do anything. I learned this from failing in business… I suggest you implement this as well. Another thing you can do is walk into the bathroom, look into the mirror and say, ‘you are smart as you are handsome but you don’t know everything.’ It will do you the world of good.

In closing this I want to say that stopping your ideas from sucking means that you get feedback, critique and other points of view involved. You can become so excited about something that you don’t even realise that you are getting emotional with it and thus clouding your judgment. Remember, if your ideas suck it’s because you don’t have enough perspective. Get some.

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