Today I remember something BillStockham and I talked a long time about. Google x. Google x is a 'moonshot' company that tries to invent crazy companies or patent ideas that will be possible in the future. One of these linked above is Loon, where they try to deliver wireless internet using a sea of connected balloons, sounds crazy. One thing they do, related to one of my last posts, is they try to kill ideas and projects they are working on, and if they can't they keep them going. With this though they also try to create a culture to help people fail more, with financial incentives if you can kill a project, and they also have a day of the dead to honor old projects. They recognize failing sucks and take so much emotional energy, especially they longer time you spend on it. So they try to make it rapid and easy, and I imagine a little fun. All this sounds nice, but at my work we don't really get these incentives, so it seems more like we have to do it ourselves. Or with some sort of community, like the day of bad ideas. Recently though I have been thinking that projects that fail their intended application can still be used, and that is usually how science moves forward. Some chemistry invented for one application, eventually gets used for some other different application in another field. This made me want to try a day of new applications for your old projects. Like repurposing an old barn door for a table. Or a Lazarus celebration.
I think the framing of 'killing' an idea is what makes it so hard to do.
But killing an idea flipped on it's head could just be seen as giving birth to other ideas.
Saying no to something is also the opportunity to say yes to another.
Also ideas don't matter that much. It's all about the human experience of chasing, developing, and doing based on idea that makes up our lives. If an idea stops showering us with the human experience and we are just enslaved to it for the sake of not killing it... well that's not a very good idea is it?
In the context of writing GabrielGreco and i suffer from this though.
I like to think that the reams of aimless writing I do will eventually all come together, so that all the ideas won't all have been a waste of time. Lazarus celebration is a good way to put it.
i wonder if this leads to a tendency to Kill things more quickly than they naturally would have tapered off - before the diminishing returns really kick in. i wonder if they have a Things Killed Off quota that some manager has to meet every month.
BillStockham
But killing an idea flipped on it's head could just be seen as giving birth to other ideas.
Saying no to something is also the opportunity to say yes to another.
Also ideas don't matter that much. It's all about the human experience of chasing, developing, and doing based on idea that makes up our lives. If an idea stops showering us with the human experience and we are just enslaved to it for the sake of not killing it... well that's not a very good idea is it?
In the context of writing
I think
Sounds like
X exists, ultimately, to create world-changing companies that could eventually become the next Google.