Why Ideas Are Obvious to You But Amazing to Others

I think we all know by now how wonderfully refreshing, inspiring, re-invigorating, thought-provoking and mind-blowing it is when ideas have sex, plenty of it!, specially, when that happens on a rather frequent basis; non-stop brain frenzy circulating all over the place, as Matt Ridley beautifully described on a TED Talk nearly a year ago; but what happens when all of those (brilliant) ideas you keep coming up with are rather obvious to you, to the point where you think they are not worth sharing anymore? Yes, I know! I have done that myself a few times already! I stopped sharing them across altogether, since no-one was going to find them valuable. Anyway. Because, you know, they were just so obvious to me that I was sure no-one was going to pick up on them any time soon. Till a couple of weeks back when Derek Sivers told us all “Obvious to you. Amazing to others“.

Yes, that’s right! I am pretty certain you would be able to relate, pretty much, to what I have just described above on having obvious ideas that you have always been a bit reluctant, perhaps a bit fearful, from sharing them across thinking that other people may consider you a bit naïve or perhaps getting ridiculed because of them. Well, here it comes 1 minute and 38 seconds of pure gold to prove us all wrong. Derek put together this fantastic, short video clip, where he pretty much comes to state how no matter how obvious your idea may well be to you, there is a great chance that it would be the kind of idea that would want to have sex with others, to the point where it may well become a pretty amazing experience.

So, I was thinking that, maybe, next time around you come up with an idea, and you think that it’s just so obvious to you, and perhaps to others, according to your own perception, you may want to pause for a bit, check this brilliant video clip by Derek and let that idea get out there, have some “interesting” time and plenty of “good fun” with other ideas and perhaps people would probably think not only it wasn’t an obvious one at all, but it was just one of those amazingly inspiring ones that still provokes lots of interaction, cross knowledge sharing, collaborating, innovating, connecting … and whatever else.

I do seriously think that, after watching that crafted video clip, I am going to start wiping out from my dictionary the word obvious. Somehow I feel I’ll be much better off altogether. And probably my own ideas, too! No matter how obvious they are, don’t you think?