Let good ideas die

The life of an idea conforms to the rules of evolution.

If you put a number of ideas in someone’s brain, they can combine and produce completely new and unique ideas — a process that has oft been compared to sexual reproduction.

My current approach to life is to continually expose myself to new ideas by reading lots of books and talking to lots of people in the hope that these ideas, combined with my life experiences, will lead to good new ideas.

As a result, I have a number of new ideas every day. Some are good, others aren’t. For some of the better ones, my instinctive response is to try and write a blog post which summarises the insight as soon as possible. This is with the intention of solidifying the thought as well as hoping other people can understand what I’m trying to say and may find it useful.

However, while writing these ideas down may help with clarity, it is not an effective use of time for most ideas. Rather, I should be allowing these ideas to undergo a process of natural selection — really great ideas will continually re-present in my mind, in one form or another, which can act as a selection pressure.

Many animals in the animal kingdom give birth to a number of children and only the fittest survive. While I may have emotional investment in some ideas that I come up with, much like the mothers of these offspring, by allowing this selection pressure to act it will ensure that only those ideas really worth writing about are brought to fruition.