Brain Crack

March 17, 2015

I know this video is 9 years old, but I only recently discovered it, and I love the idea here: that we don’t execute our ideas because we’re afraid of not being perfect, we’re afraid we aren’t good enough, and we’re afraid of what other people will think. And if we let our excuses, stop us from just doing it and putting stuff out there, even if it’s not perfect (because it won’t be), then we actually get addicted to that idea that we have a bunch of “good” ideas, but we really have nothing to show for it. Here is the transcript:

I run out of ideas every day

Each day I live in mortal fear that I’ve used up the last idea that’ll ever come to me

If you don’t want to run out of ideas, the best thing to do is not to execute them

You can tell yourself that you don’t have the time or resources to do them right

Then they stay around in your head like brain crack

No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas

That you’ll get to later

Some people get addicted to that brain crack

And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed

And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with glitter and rose petals

And everyone’s clapping for them

But the bummer is, most ideas kinda suck when you do them

And no matter how much you plan, you still have to do something for the first time

And you’re almost guaranteed the first time you do something, it’ll blow

But somebody who does something bad three times, still has three times the experience of that other person

Who’s still dreaming of all the applause

When I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out into the world as fast as possible

Because I certainly don’t want to be addicted to brain crack


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Written by Adam Garrett-Harris, a podcaster and software engineer in Utah. You should follow him on Twitter