The Idea Of The Distraction Idea.

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Note: This is written with the context of at home projects in mind.

I have a lot of ideas for things to build, far more than I could ever make in my life time even if I worked on them full time.

The lure of a new idea is strong. It offers a new challenge  unexplored fertile territories for my mind to explore. This makes them more compelling than what ever project I am currently attempting progress with.

I keep a list of ideas for things to develop and as many of them are simple ideas I once foolishly thought that I could churn though many of them and thus be free to work on bigger and better projects.

Alas as you try to develop an idea that should be a week long break from my main project the idea starts to suffer from feature creep and before long is taking over a month to build or more.

As many of the ideas are little more than wouldn't it be nice type of app I am not wholly committed to them, meaning I am much more susceptible to another new idea taking over from them.

This can lead to the problem of not finishing anything, finishing is hard work. Almost as bad is I can end up working on stuff that is not taking me towards my goals. Suddenly it all starts to feel like employment just without the monthly increase in my bank account.

Not working on things related to my goals means I am suffering from a opportunity cost. That is doing lot of work but losing the opportunity to progressing towards my goals.

Obviously if the idea is a good one then it is well worth working on and perhaps even adjusting long term goals. Most ideas are well err...average. They are just distraction ideas, it is like my brain is trying stop me achieving my goals.

I have often justified distraction ideas on the basis of education but usually I don't learn anything deep as the idea is not deep and since I don't use what I have learnt in my next project much of it slowly falls out of my brain.

Learning to recognize distraction ideas is very important and it is fairly easy when you have clear goals. If say my goals is to be a kick ass games programmer then the cool idea for an android time tracking app that will only take the "weekend" should set the alarms ringing.

I know I have fallen for distraction ideas quite a bit in the past to the point that a new idea instantly get called a distraction idea and it has to fight in my brain to prove otherwise. A guilty until proven innocent approach?


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