Thanks for the diagnosis, treatment, and outlook, friend. Will definitely keep your blog on my must-read list.

One solution I’ve found is to work in areas where everything is relatively new, and learn skills your peers don’t know. This gave me a nice runway to thrive while learning concepts and appear to be a pro while probably still being an amateur.

He says it’s the fundamental mechanism of cognition: our minds produce myriad scenarios, and then eliminate ones that don’t match our prior experiences.

Clinical confabulation, then, is a failure to bring experiences to bear in deciding what is real: Oliver Sacks’ famous patient from the case study has lost all concept of her left side, and the hand in her bed (her left hand, unthinkably) looks familiar, so it must be her brother’s hand.

The condition of idea-personhood is qualtiatively different: not a failure in the mechanism that screens for reality, but in the mechanism that screens for legitimacy in the realm of ideas. It’s confabulation in Hecht-Nielsen’s sense of the word, but even an extreme degree of it wouldn’t cross over into the sort of thinking that gets one written up in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

1. I view myself as too lazy to be a good doer. I am aware of the amount of work required to be really really competent in something, since I’m quite competent in a few areas, but I’m also aware that I completely lack motivation to get to that point, since, well… there’s a level of trivia that starts to get really really boring.
2. About a year ago I did go through existentialism and have found it useful. Not too big on Camus, found him too boring, but the general concepts are and probably forever will be with me.
3. I think of doers as a higher form of life. I really envy them. I’d like to have their focus. I especially envy the organizers/managers, since, considering that having real impact is always a team effort, they’re the ones that are responsible for the overall picture. And I’ll never be them.
4. I was always perfectly aware of how hard it would be to gain influence on anything while not being a doer and it bugged the crap out of me when, in my area of interest, the doers got the spotlight (yes, that’s how it should be, but I can’t help being envious . However, I’ve finally managed to figure out the Silver Bullet and am in the process of implementing it. Basically the idea is to look at what the doers are doing that buys them influence and then use those brain cycles of yours to figure out something similar, but something that requires only a fraction of the work. And do that. From an external perspective it gets you on an even footing with the doers (hey, someone would need to be an expert in your field to understand the difference in the amount of work required) and as such might grant you the influence you seek. Obviously figuring out the shortcut is a prerequisite to success, but since I’m already perfectly aware that I can’t be a doer, I’m *really* motivated to figure something out. After all, It’s the only way for me to succeed and not feel like a failure.

What you have described above is just the same as the above article, except in completely different language. Its good to see the concept come through so clearly in very different languages.

Ideapersonhood is a painful thing, as you can see I am posting an anonym comment Some of us haven’t found our way, and are in a dark place where we think we might never find it.

And no, I also don’t think that thin slicing is key. The opposite is true in fact. Thin slicing is the characteristic mode of operation of experts and real-time decision-makers. Doers in fact. William Duggan’s complementary notion of ‘strategic intuition’ captures idea-person style thinking a bit better.

Patrick: I definitely don’t subscribe to the Eleanor Roosevelt model for the simple reason that I cannot do everything at professional levels of skill. I can only do some things at an amateur level and maybe 1-2 at pro levels. That means ER’s standard is an unrealistic one for complex forms of collaboration (though not for simple, unskilled ones line “let’s all recycle in 2009, starting with me”).

But I do agree that big-idea people who a) have no clue what execution involves and b) aren’t willing to do some appropriate piece themselves (even if it is a minor piece… idea people may well only be fit to make coffee during execution), then they deserve some disdain, but not tuning out. Even the most execution-clueless doing-shy idea people might still have good ideas that are better than anybody else’s.

But nice to see some people identifying themselves as ‘bridges’ … probably necessary in most situations to catalyze things.

The only types of “idea people” I have had a disdain for are the ones who suggest gigantic endeavors as if they were offhand gestures, or, have no idea what is involved in the execution of their idea.

being on booth sides of the fence, most “idea people” tend to look at me as a “go-to” person because I can see how to execute the big idea. This also creates far too much free work, too.

What you have to do if you’re a “making ideator” like myself is learn to say no unless you can line your idea up with theirs.

I read through this piece all over again! Congratulations – you have 79 articles for the year…thattranslates to nearly 7 a month…almost 1.5 a week! That is prolific! Keep at it!

I couldn’t quite understand how “doer” is different from an “idea” person? I read it again just to get some insight on idea person. We, by sheer nature, create more complexities. And when we try to be ‘simple’, we make everything more complex! I find many “doer” kind of people just doing ‘anything’. And the genuine idea people always have a ‘functional’ way of doing! Is that a fair assessment, in your opinion?

All our decision-making happens within the first few minutes – whether it be an idea, meeting a person or anything else that we do. Thin slicing is, in my opinion, the only reality . The idea is born within of those few seconds or a minute or so. After that, it is ruminating and building the idea to give it some shape, form and structure. And once all of these are done, content goes amiss…we lose interest and move on to another idea.

Which, incidentally, is another characteristic Idea person tactic. The popular quote, “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think” probably seems profoundly true for idea persons.

“Normal” and “routine” sound like bad things. When “you have a different view or way of saying” is hurled as a criticism, an idea person feels a sense of satisfaction.

You have given some excellent advice. This theme definitely requires further exploration.

This was actually a very good and interesting read. I tried to map my own self with all the wisdom on ‘ideas’ that you share here. Trust me, I didn’t fit into any…and I definitely miss the line and thus I cannot toe any line.

I have always been a ‘quiet idea’ person. I am going out on a limb here to say this, because I do not have any tangible proof to say that my ideas work. But largely, I have succeeded in doing things my way without being ruthless or aggressive…and have also tasted some amount of success and respect amongst peers and seniors all the same.

My ideas, as you might now be knowing, hover around how I can possibly write a beautiful Hindi novel one day, or a pathbreaking script/screenplay for bollywood, or even some sublime lyrics for Bollywood…and that does not drain me at all.

Keep writing man…I see that you cannot stop!!!!

Will email on the other stuff…nice to connect again. And p.s., another of my regulars goes by torpy, so am glad you are now propeller

Venkat

by the way, I like subway sandwiches. Enjoy the rest of your day.

later
//

On a tangent, are you in touch with teKillah and the other assorted varieties of CH handles circa 2001 – 2003?

Either way, good to see you here.

later
// (torpedo from CH)