Most of the time you see a light bulb as the iconic image for an idea. Me myself, I have a lot of ideas. And I like to put my ideas into motion. Some days I have these ideas that make me feel like a genius, and other days I have these ideas that make me feel kind of silly. (Usually those are the ideas I wake up with)
For example, this morning I woke up with an idea to make a 4 foot long clear plastic racing channel for cockroaches. I deviced a way to paint racing stripes on roaches my kids could catch in PNG, and then how to get them to race through a track device without escaping.
Silly idea.. my wife says 'have fun with that one, I'm not coming near it and NO you can't use my paintbrushes!'.
Not every idea is a winner. Some are. Some are HUGE winners, some are little tiny things that turn out to impact and encourage other people in huge ways that I never anticipated.
I'd say that on average, I put about 70% of my ideas into motion, and from that, about 10% of those ideas ever come to completion, and from that, about 50% of those turn out to be worth while.
Which means, on any given day, I'm working on another idea, and about once a week I complete an idea and it turned out to be worth doing.
I've had people ask me, and wonder how I do so many of these little (what they call) - side projects. "Chad how do you do so many creative things?" I don't really know. I just know that I like to live my life always having an idea or a project running in the back of my mind. And I don't like the ideas to stay in there and fester, I have to do something about them…. so I do. I find the time and do them. People sometimes say 'you have a too much free time.' I don't really. I don't have any more time than anyone else.
Some of my big ideas never get to completion because well, I get stuck along the way trying to figure out part of it.
Some of the ideas are to raise money, some are to bring smiles, others are just to satisfy curiosities.
The big ideas I have, that sort of get stuck in the process, never leave my mind… they sort of stew there and become dreams.
Today I read this and really liked it.
"It is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream then you miss the felicity of you heart beating and the smell of the grass growing… Your dream should be like that of a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contended by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sauteed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you've eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, when the time is right, you bite down hard. The dream is yours. And then you chew on the next one."
Yes I read books daily.
You know what I would love to do when/if I ever retire? I would love to meet someone who has a ton of money and lacks inspiration. I would like to partner with that person and share ideas and watch what we do to change the world! The list is endless in my head. Ideas to better humanity, make people smile, bring clean water, more power, low power, God's Word, speed production, the list of ideas goes on forever, but we don't.
Here's hoping you have dreams and the ones that have eternal value, become reality!
