I feel that what really matters is getting things done. Ideas are great — they are fun —, but without execution, they don’t amount to much. Ideas are overrated and overemphasised. I think most people recognize the narrative where a “stroke of genius” turns into a billion-dollar idea. In reality, this seems to almost never happen. It’s much better to just start somewhere and iterate as you go.
Routines, I feel, are much more valuable than ideas. Anyone can come up with (bad) ideas, but a routine takes perseverance, it takes planning and it takes discipline. Those are skills that can be developed and nurtured, but it takes some serious work.
It’s also a skill issue: If you set the bar too high, you will burn out. If you do nothing, all you will ever have is the idea which never materializes. I would claim that the routine that maximizes the expected outcome is less demanding than one would expect. Amid the initial enthusiasm it probably feels like doing almost nothing. However, what really matters is if one pushes through the plateaus of indifference, those inevitable points where you feel like quitting whatever it was you started.
And, of course, there are situations where it’s time to admit that the right course of action is to change course.
All this amounts to a complex puzzle. On the other hand, the rewards are also great. Life-changing even.
