You and I both have met at least one person in our life who has screamed out and consequently sulked about someone “stealing their idea.”
Ideas are free. They cannot be stolen. They are in the noosphere, the collective conscious, the akashic records, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. I repeat: ideas are free and cannot be stolen.
What is not free is the execution of an idea. The strategy, tactics, devotion, manpower, and elbow grease behind making a thought become a reality has a value, anywhere between a few hundred dollars to nearly infinite, depending on the particular idea.
Calculating conservatively, I’d say I’ve had at least 70 amazing ideas, probably more than a hundred. Most have been ignored or forgotten, and several have been taken and produced into something real, either my myself of those invisible “thieves.” For those self-created fictions that are now palpable realities conjured by others, have I turned into a jealous, outwardly-loathing, super-secretive motherfucker? No.
Why?
Because I didn’t have the time nor the desire to make them happen. Notice I did not say the resources, i.e. money or time. If you think of something original, I praise you for being a step above the rest, but an idea is not enough. If you don’t take the time to believe in your idea and give it life, then it doesn’t matter that you thought of it. I won’t get into the existential argument that there are no original ideas in our minds, but I will argue that an idea is worthless until proper attempts at execution are employed. These are free, open source times - ideas are literally worthless.
Don’t write down your ideas. Do them. Make them happen. Breathe life into them.
If you’re telling your friends or posting on a message board about how you came up with the idea for custom Nike shoes or Facebook or chocolate raspberry ice cream or the artificial heart, let me be the first to tell you: no one gives a fuck. Sure, maybe you thought it, but you didn’t do it.
Stop complaining. Start doing. It’s that easy.
If you have a riff in your head, play it. Play it loud, play it hard, and play it often. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and go back to your day job. Sympathy is for cancer patients, not visionaries.
Thank you.