Stop taking credit for ideas you didn’t execute on. We’ve all had those moments. When you find out about a new project or initiative and can recall with great clarity having had that very idea before.
It’s natural to want to allow ourselves that moment of validation. It’s as if a thought of yours has sprung fully formed, so it’s rewarding to take some ownership over it. But’ it’s hardly fair and certainly not accurate.
Ideas are are easy to conceive of when our creativity flows. Executing is the challenge. Perhaps more to the point: it is far easier to know what is a good idea than when it’s a good idea.
It’s infuriating when someone close to you moves on something you think you were a part of developing. It’s hard to not want to announce our place in something — or worse, accuse others of infringing on what is ours.
But remember, ideas can rarely be owned — patent trolling aside. The hard work of making an idea real should be. So next time you learn about something that you had thought about, take a moment to think of the novelty but check yourself: getting the idea done is far harder and more of an accomplishment than thinking of it, and it’s too easy to steal that feeling of launch for the people who did the building.
