My Best Idea

I’ve been reading Twyla Tharp’s book, ‘The Creative Habit.’ I bought it a few months ago in the Kindle format so that I could test reading books on my iPod Touch. I have come to some conclusions, especially about reading on the iPod Touch, but those are for another blog post. Twyla Tharp is an American Dancer and Choreographer who has won both Emmy’s and Tony’s for her work. Her book explores the creative process.

Twyla’s book is very interesting and thought provoking. I began reading it and was really getting into it when she posed a series of questions to the reader. The first of which I didn’t have an answer to. She asked “What is your best idea ever?”

This caused me a lot of trouble to find an answer. Was it some programming idea I had? Was it creating ManaNation? Is it one of the many business ideas I’ve had and not pursued? Was it something else? I just didn’t know. So I stopped reading the book for a while to figure out the answer. In truth it was pretty shocking to realize I didn’t know what I thought of as my greatest idea. As I tried to find an answer, the first epiphany was that I did not know what to use as a meter of success. Was it the effect? The potential greatness? The best response from my friends? I hadn’t decided.

photo credit: diaper

How about you, do you guys know what your best idea is? I’d guess not for most of you. That’s okay, let’s take this journey together.

To me, success is determined by the magnitude of the result. Thus any of my unexplored or un-pursued idea cannot be the greatest idea I’ve ever had because there is no result to measure.

ManaNation is a great show and it has helped thousands of Magic the Gathering players improve their game (just posted episode 75!.) It has opened new doors for me to some of the great minds in the game. It has helped me build friendships with new people. It has earned a small income to cover its costs even. But it hasn’t changed the world.

For work at various jobs I’ve had numerous ideas on how to solve problems or how to improve various things but none have been million dollar ideas. At my last job we were trying to play with viral content and I came up with the idea of doing a Firefox spoof site called FirefoxAddiction.com and we pulled in tens of thousands of hits (with 971 diggs as well, enough to make the frontpage) when it launched but was still considered a failure as it didn’t meet the boss’ expectations.

Perhaps my greatest idea ever was the act of learning HTML which opened up the avenue to my current employment and so many other opportunities. It hasn’t made a difference in the world yet, but with it the above items wouldn’t be listed. If I hadn’t wanted to do web development I would have probably gone to college to study linguistics and languages. My life would be completely different.

Yes. I think that is it. But it eluded me for so long because it wasn’t earth shattering. It wasn’t the glamorous idea. It hasn’t made me my riches (yet). And it hopefully won’t be the best idea I ever have in my life.

What about you guys, what is your best idea?