That was My Idea

Have you ever had an idea that you later saw with someone else's name on it? Maybe it was an idea for a new product that would make you rich. Or it could have been an answer to a random question that you later saw someone write in a magazine or newspaper column. I've had this happen nearly one hundred times by now. The frustration is sometimes nearly unbarable.

Even worse, it always made me wonder whether someone was looking over my shoulder or hacking into my computer. Neither turned out to be true, but the feeling alone is unnerving and definitely not recommended. Anyway, there still had to be an explanation. Why in the world does someone else always have my ideas?

Finally, it came to me. When exactly, I don't quite remember, but what it is I won't forget. An idea is a compound of thoughts. Some of the thoughts are what I call the 'Basic' thoughts, these are the ones necessary for the idea. The rest of the thoughts are 'Variable' thoughts, these are what make the slight differences between your idea and the one you later find isn't yours. Let me explain. Ideas are thoughts, right. Since ideas are normally rather complex they are usually made up of a number of thoughts. Knowing this, we can think of a thought as an object. This object is made up of pieces. Each piece is another thought. So now, we have an idea object made up of a bunch of thoughts. We get to this point in our mind just by thinking about it, 'building an idea without all the work of crafting an object by hand'.

I've heard the arguement for ideas being specific points in certain thought processes. With that being the reason it seems that only some people can come up with the ideas. However, I don't believe that arguement. If ideas are simply combinations of thoughts, then it doesn't matter how you combine the thoughts. All that matters is that all the thoughts are combined. That means that anyone can come up with an idea.

It gets easier. If you think about what an idea is for a while, you'll notice something else about what an idea is. Specifically something about the thoughts that make up the idea. They're all related! So if you want to come up with an idea, you just take a bunch of thoughts and relate them together. It's truely 'Elementary'.

Now this may seem a crued, uneducated way of thinking, but for some it will work far better than any idea book written by some college graduate somewhere. Think about the basics. Don't get overwhelmed. And sometimes, even goals can get in the way of real thinking.