A man addicted to ideas need to be intervened with starvation.
The thing you need might not be more inspiration, ideas or input. It might be to bend your head down and “just” work with what you have.
“A man addicted to ideas need to be intervened with starvation.”
— Matthew McConaughey
This really resonated with me because of a couple of reasons. First of all:
This has been one of my main talking points with friends for the last couple of years. I’ve had friends who have been watching TED-talk on TED-talk, listening to podcast upon podcast, reading inspirational quotes upon quotes on Instagram and so on.
They’ve all been in the same situation: they haven’t really done anything with all of the things they’ve gathered. That might be fine on a micro, but there hasn’t been a plan to do anything on the macro. Regardless of how long I’ve known these people, there hasn’t been action on all of the information.
Gathering material either for the sake of gathering, or for telling people THAT they gather rather than telling people WHAT they’ve gathered.
Secondly, I’ve been in a period of plateauing. But I’ve had ideas.
And for each one of those ideas, I’ve been feeling worse and worse about not doing anything with them. It’s like I’ve been walking around with gems all up in my head, without a way to give them to other people.
What I realised when reading this quote was that I’ve been released of all of the starvation I’ve been carrying. I’ve got basically no restrictions anymore. I’m running my own company. I’ve got enough cash to buy any technical equipment I want. I don’t have any obligatory studies to do, so I can read pretty much what I want. I don’t have any restrictions to act as my starvation.
Or at least not the same restrictions as I’m used to having been in some sort of education system for the past 16 years.
What that does, at least to me, is releasing a whole lot of anxiety. I have a gazillion ideas, many of them viable, actionable and possible to build business around. There are endless opportunities, all in front of me.
Lastly, and I think this goes beyond only me.
You probably don’t need more ideas. You need scarcity of resources and a problem that you’re passionate about solving. Starving yourself of the ideas, the inspirational content and the input will put you in a better place.
