Nate Weiner

This is an old archived post from my former blog The Idea Shower. It's where I cataloged my product explorations and releases, one of which ultimately became Pocket.

This post was published back in 2007. It may not function as originally intended or may be missing images.

Follow your Idea Path

September 29, 2007

I have spent months of my life working on projects that have failed. But I feel no regret. It is because each idea that I have followed through with brought me both education and experience. And what's more, it brought new and better ideas.

Consider the real-world example of NASA. NASA exists to accomplish things that are impossible. They strive to explore an (seemingly) infinite space, one which none of it's employees will ever a mere percent of in their lifetime. It may sometimes seem fruitless to attempt but they do anyway. But in their pursuit to explore a seemingly impossible goal that have discovered and invented thousands of things we use everyday.

It is important that you follow through with every idea that challenges you. Do not wait around for THE idea to drop into your lap.
Every idea you work on will have problems, and almost all of those problems will have solutions. And once you begin creating solutions, your ideas will start to mean something to people. The most successful websites out there today are just simple solutions to every-day problems. (Google=search, Craigslist=find/sell, Facebook=connect) You will find that once you put your ideas to the task, more ideas will come to you, and your solutions will become more attractive to the public. It's this process that is your Idea Path.

The concept of an Idea Path is based on the fact that one idea ultimately leads to another. Working on one idea may enable you to eventually accomplish or stumble upon another . When I started out on my first idea, Lyrics and Tab, I only knew HTML. But in order to make the site do what I wanted, I found out quickly I needed a way to run processes on the server side, and to store information in a database. This lead me to PHP and MySql, which ultimately lead me down the road I am on now. To demonstrate this, on all of my ideas and tools, I will show the idea path of the project, so you can see what lead to each and every idea.

It is important that you follow through with every idea that challenges you. Do not wait around for THE idea to drop into your lap. Pursue the path to it.