Don’t Covet Your Ideas

I got a Christmas present today. It was a book. It’s called “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be.” To be honest, I haven’t had the opportunity to read through it all yet, but it looks promising at a first glance. It’s written by a guy name Paul Arden who worked at Saatchi as a creative director.

One of the things that it talked about was freeing ideas. The author suggests, “Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.”

You remember from your high school days when other kids prevented you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their paper. I remember during exam time, some people would construct elaborate fortresses of pencil cases and binders. It is the same at work – people are secretive with ideas. They are afraid of letting other people know what they’re thinking because they think that they won’t get credit for it.

The problem with hoarding ideas is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.

So the more you give away the more comes back to you.

Ideas are open knowledge. Don’t claim ownership. They’re not your ideas anyways … they’re someone else’s. They are out there floating in the ether. You just have to put yourself in a frame of mind to pick them up. The hard part is having the balls to act on them.

- Christian