ideas

The idea in my head vs the first draft

Ideas require patience. At Steve Jobs’ funeral, Apple's chief designer Jony Ive said: “I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily just squished.”

A degree of relaxation is necessary to have good ideas because one doesn't have them so much as receive them—and one cannot receive anything with clenched fists.

People often email me with big-sounding ideas (reinvent commerce, change the way people meet, transform scientific research), and the bigger the idea sounds, the less interested I am. Truly big ideas don't sound big initially.

working theory that being creative is less about originality and more about having the executional intensity to make many ideas real coupled with a high capacity to resist the fear of humiliation

I am fairly certain most people cannot have their best ideas if they are in back to back meetings every day. You need time to question things and then research it. So, if you wonder why it’s hard to make ground breaking products after the first, look at your calendar.