［Translation］Ignore Everybody

Translation: Joyce Cheng

First posted on the original author's private mailing list.

As part of my speaking engagements in dozens of cities around the world over the past few months, I mentioned 5 principles that can be helpful when approaching new side projects. Especially when it comes to new ideas, I often like to talk about the concept of "ignoring everyone." My main inspiration came from a book of the same name written by Hugh MacLeod.

Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of random ideas. Creativity is cheap because everyone has it. Getting things done is what ultimately counts.

But despite this, there is still something magical about a great idea. We must understand that ideas are inherently fragile. They are like tiny naked babies, unable to protect themselves.

If we truly believe in a new idea, we have to work hard to protect it. This is difficult because oftentimes great ideas are killed by the people around us. Realizing a great idea is an inherently lonely road. If everyone agrees with you, then maybe the idea isn’t that great after all.

Coworkers stifle your ideas because they don’t want to see you succeed, even though they may not mean to do so. Friends and family will also try to stifle your creativity because they love you and don't want to see you fail. All they do is protect you from taking risks, slowly killing your creativity in a way that you never notice.

Finally, it seems like everyone is against you - and that's when you need to make the decision to selectively ignore it. Hugh MacLeod puts it simply as follows:

The more interesting and innovative your ideas are, the less good advice others will be able to give you. This idea is your child, and she is fragile and needs your protection until she is strong enough to withstand the attacks of others.

The funny thing is, we do everything possible to kill great ideas immediately. We gathered 20 people for a brainstorming session, and everyone threw out new ideas one after another, only to see them die on the spot. Brainstorming is where good ideas die, sadly.

In addition to this, we often consult our “smartest” people to gather feedback on our new ideas. Unfortunately, the smarter the people in the group, the more reasons they have to think your idea won't work.

George Lewis (the prototype of Mad Men) once said: To create good work, your time is 1% inspiration, 9% perspiration, and 90% proof.

90% is about protecting your idea, and slowly, and with great effort, winning people over to your side by proving your idea.

But the secret to doing all this is to ignore everyone at first. In the beginning, you are often as fragile as your idea, so all you can do is isolate yourself from other people's opinions. Stick to your gut and keep working on your idea until it is strong enough to survive on its own.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with the idea of ??building a search engine, it sounded pretty scary. At that time, more than five other search engines existed, and none of them achieved commercial success.

In 1902, the New York Times wrote that automobiles would never be cheap enough to become popular among the general public. They called cars "impractical" with no future. Yes, this assertion comes from one of the "greatest newspapers."

AirBnB also seems like a terrible idea. Everyone already knows that sofa travel is a weird thing that only hippies do, not the general public.

An online messaging service that borrows from the 140-character limit of texting? Seriously, of all the possibilities the internet has given us, Twitter is the worst idea you can think of.

An APP that you can use to shoot video clips, but after watching it once, the clip will disappear forever? The idea sounded really flimsy until it was called Snapchat.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell offered to sell his telephone patent rights to the Western Union Company. The latter politely refused on the grounds that the phone was "a worthless, useless toy."

Finally, there are two things we can learn from these stories:

1. Implement new ideas while ignoring everyone else. If you love your idea, the chances of it coming true are 50-50, and no one but you can give you the advice you need. Stop asking for advice and just do it! Or like what I sometimes do: if 10 people call you stupid or an idiot, you've passed the test, now prove them wrong.

2. When we see other people working hard to realize their ideas, we can try to be more open-minded instead of being dismissive of others. But having said that, I also believe that the negation of others is a motivating factor for myself to work harder. It's really up to you how you treat other people's opinions.