The Learning Curve | From Ideas to Execution: Strategies and Tools
Uncover, create, and act on good ideas.
Read time: 3 mins
Good ideas. What are they, what can we do to generate them, and how can we execute them?
Today, I’m sharing examples and systems for cultivating your own stream of good ideas.
Ready? Let's go
At a glance:
Something to scroll: 10 ideas that could shape the future
Something to read: Does a good idea matter anymore?
Something to listen to: Our Luck Surface area, and how to increase it
Something that's being done differently: Principles for executing good ideas
Something to try out: Tally up and validate the idea.
Something to scroll: This thread by George Mack is the perfect thought experiment to start this issue. He shares 10 ideas that could shape the future.
Something to read: Does a good idea matter anymore?
The idiomatic phrase “a dime a dozen” is meant to show that something is super common, and therefore of little value.
So what good are ideas anymore when they can be generated easier than ever?
In this research publication Ideas are Dimes a Dozen: LLM for Idea Generation in Innovation, we learn that GPT-4 outperformed humans in generating ideas. GPT-4 produced 200 ideas in 15 minutes, while humans only came up with 5. Additionally, the ideas generated by GPT-4 were rated higher in terms of purchase intent.
Here's the full 12-page report.
Yet, what good are 200 ideas without execution? How can we put ourselves in a position to execute?
Something to listen to: Increasing our luck surface area.
Luck plays a role in making things happen, even for those who are successful at executing their ideas.
Luck isn’t chance; it’s about exposing yourself to favorable conditions. Learning to cut negative influences and connecting with people who elevate your growth. Expanding your luck surface area involves taking strategic actions to shape your fortune.
This jargon-free podcast episode is ideal for the next time you have 22 minutes on your hands.
Here’s what I’ve been doing, and what you can do too:
Remove black holes: cut habits, actions, the content in your feed, and even people. This increases the chance of positive encounters.
list them - cut them out (start with one)
Expand the luck surface area: List people to reach out to. Reach out to at least one. I’ve been doing this since the start of the year. But then I discovered the idea of my “luck surface area”. And that’s when I realized I had been expanding mine all along.
Use a Personal CRM, like this one. I put everyone I want to reach out to here. If it’s been more than 3 months since we last spoke, the thumbs up turns into “Time to reach out."
Something that's being done differently: Principles for executing good ideas
Paul Graham’s How to Do Great Work essay offers wisdom on achieving through impactful work. It's not an easy read, but here are his principles:
Focus on your strengths
Work on projects that matter
Persist through challenges
Take calculated risks
Gather feedback from users (more on this further down)
They apply universally, regardless of your field.
If you want a bit more, here’s a tweet with 40 great ideas from his essay.
If you want even more, here’s the full essay.
Something to try out: Tally up and validate your idea
Ready to put your good idea into action? Tally is a free customisable form builder I discovered this week. No code. Easy on the eye.
As discussed above, execution is key, and a quick survey can help validate an idea within a target audience.
To show an example, I made a survey to test out an idea based on my own experience. I want to gather information about the local professional network. Then, I'll create content that tries to connect professionals and projects in the community.
Take a look for yourself. Your feedback will shape the future of The Learning Curve.
Conclusion:
If you got this far, thank you.
Today, we explored obvious and non-obvious future predictions. We discovered how to generate good ideas and increase our luck surface area. We also learned principles for keeping our ideas on track and gathering audience intelligence.
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See you in two weeks.
Peace,
Has
