Rule #28 “Have Ideas-Big Ones!”

I recently started reading an article in Wired Magazine about climate change. Don’t worry. That’s not what this post is about. However, the author of the piece, Wired Editor in Chief Nicholas Thompson shared a story from his 11 year old son that was profound. While trying to explain capitalism, climate change and all that’s involved to his three children the 11 year old came up with an excellent question.

“If there’s one thing that I could invent,” the young Thompson asked, “that would help, what would it be?”

This is the essence of an 11 year old’s question. It’s big. It has no limits. It’s just as big as his young mind can muster. We should all be so bold. I think as Thompson describes in the article as we get older our ideas start to “narrow.” They get squeezed out by experience, let downs, the real world and other responsibilities taking their place. I like to do an exercise I once learned years ago when I’m speaking to a group on how to overcome big challenges. I pose the scenario to them as follows:

Let’s say I tell you the only way your family can be saved is if you get to the moon, pick up a moon rock and bring it back to earth, what do you do? At first many just sit silent. Some will come out and say It’s impossible. I then push. “You have to get there. Failure is not an option. Tell me the first thing you would do. Inevitably someone finally pops up and says, “Well, I guess I’d first call NASA.” Bingo! There you have it. The first idea. From there what would you do? And so it goes. The point being it forces the participants to begin generating ideas.

In David Perell’s excellent essay on Peter Thiel (Peter Thiel’s Religion) he offers the following:

As Americans geared up for World War II in the early 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) called upon the nation to increase its production of airplanes. But in a 1940 speech to Congress, FDR said: “I should like to see this Nation geared up to the ability to turn out at least 50,000 planes a year.” At the time, nobody thought FDR’s goal was possible. 

Americans were still plagued by the Great Depression. Roosevelt spoke to 132 million Americans. Only 48,000 of them earned more than $2,500 per year, the modern equivalent of $40,000 in today’s dollars. Nearly one-third had no running water. And none of them had antibiotics or unemployment insurance. 

At the time, Americans were producing fewer than 1,000 planes per year. The Nazis had 7 million soldiers, but America had less than 200,000. American industry responded with passionate intensity. Ford Motors had never built an airplane, but America sought to produce more airplanes at Willow Run than Hitler produced in all of Germany. To build the plant, builders moved 650,000 cubic yards of dirt and laid 58 miles of grain tile underground. Production exceeded expectations. Ford Liberator bombers took flight in the spring of 1942, ahead of schedule. Within five years, Ford produced tens of thousands of airplanes per year. War production board chief Donald Nelson captured the ambition of the moment: “When we are talking about America’s war production job we are discussing the biggest job in all of history.”

A lesson I’ve taken from James Altucher’s book, “Choose Yourself” is creating an idea journal. Every day I come up with 10 ideas. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad. I’ve tackled everything from how to save $100,000 cash in three years to how to start a vitamin company. It doesn’t matter. Ask yourself, if there is one thing I could do to make the world a better place what would it be? Think big. Think huge. If you could do one thing to be a better father, what would it be? Think. Think. Think. This is the point. As Altucher says, “make your brain sweat.”

This world needs big ideas. You need big ideas. Make it a point to tear down the walls of your mind and let your ideas burst freely like a light shining in a dark room. Let the idea light travel as far and wide as it possibly can. Who knows what you may come up with. You rule! Jason