#idea execution

I spent 6 hours making a 30-second video to promote my 1-hour podcast episode.

This is exactly the kind of backwards creative logic that led to us starting this podcast in the first place. Why execute one great idea efficiently when you can spend triple the time on a completely different great idea that supports the first great idea?

The math is beautiful in its stupidity: 6 hours of video editing for 30 seconds of content to promote 60 minutes of content that we recorded in 90 minutes while eating chips and interrupting each other.

But honestly? Those hundreds of overlapping "pre"s hitting at once sound like the inside of my brain on any given Tuesday. And if you're the type of person who thinks "I should make a needlessly complex promotional video instead of just posting a link like a normal human," then you're probably exactly the type of person who will understand why we have 47 unused TV pilot concepts and a crippling case of idea inflation.

The episode is genuinely entertaining though. We develop a crime series about detective sisters, one of whom solves cases from a sensory deprivation tank. It's peak "what if we just kept going with this clearly unhinged concept until it actually worked."

John Kelly: The Many Shades of Procrastination (4:17)

Illustrator John Kelly calls us out on all of the things that we do to avoid doing the things we really should be doing – a bracing (and hilarious) reminder of how creative we can get with our procrastination techniques.

Simon Sinek: If You Don't Understand People, You Don't Understand Business

Timing and execution of the idea as well as your team are more important.

It’s always been in between the things I thought I was doing that the real work has happened.

William Kentridge

The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Ira Glass

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.

J.K. Rowling

Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.

IDEO

Procrastination is finding the most difficult way of doing something, is jumping from one idea to another to another, is checking your emails.

John Kelly

Three factors lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Daniel Pink