How to Decide What to Work On - Scott H Young

In practice, most ideas—even groundbreaking ones—tend to be derivative or incremental. Even ideas that look original usually start out as a permutation on something already extant. Given background and context, even the most radical suggestions look like incremental steps.

This suggests that the best way to have better ideas is to expose yourself to more ideas. To the ones used by people who are accomplishing things in same the direction you’d like to go.

• A threshold for action is a crude way for filtering your projects. Advice to “do less” or “do more” misses the crux of the issue. Which efforts should you drop? Which ones should you undertake?
• Having adjusted your threshold, and hopefully immersed yourself in a range of possible idea templates, now you need to cross over from a notion to a commitment.
• A commitment can come from either direction. You can lower your threshold for action, generate a new idea and decide to pursue it. Or you can tighten your standards and commit to focusing on a pursuit you are already engaged in.

Much of life boils down to figuring out a path for yourself and then getting yourself to actually walk it.

We often fail to stick to our plans because we’re not confident in our chosen path. And we fail to find paths forward because we don’t try enough things to find our footing.

Decision and action are always combined. The challenge is taking the next step.