Keeping Your Ducks Straight

So you have stumbled upon a good idea. Excellent. It could serve many purposes. It may have arisen out of a necessity, it may have simply landed on your doorstop. Ideas wonder in and out of our heads, much more frequently than we think. Have you ever woken up in the middle of a night thinking that you have discovered the greatest idea in the history of mankind, and that you can quit your job in the morning? But only to wake up the next morning and trying to remember what you were thinking about the night before. Or perhaps you did remember, and simply discarded it into the circular filing cabinet, and went to work. We all have done this. We do this constantly, every day, only to kick ourselves when we learn that someone else had had your same idea and had turned it into their reality.

One of the reasons that we discard ideas is that we choose not to think them through. But if your boss handed you a new project, you would have to think about it, wouldn't you? ... or be faced with the consequences when it fails. So you would normally have to develop a plan, perhaps a business plan. Or in the very least write it down, it may not be as wacky as it initially appears. Did you know that Thomas Edison patented over 1000 ideas. Some we would certainly consider wacky. One of his lessor known inventions was concrete. He attempted to make pianos and one-piece homes, caskets, phonograph cabinets, yes, out of poured concrete. Many people thought that this idea was truly wacky..... that was, of course, until Mr. Edison was contracted to build the Yankee Stadium.... out of solid concrete. Because if the high quality of concrete, the stadium lasted many seasons before requiring any repairs.

We all think differently, some of us are 'visual' people... others are calculators... others perhaps are risk takers. Regardless of the type of thinkers we are... we all have the ability to successfully develop and prosper from our own ideas.

Just think about it. We simply need to put and keep our ducks in a row.