Ideas in Execution

I started reading Jeff Atwoods blog Coding Horror when I was in college. It’s very good, I learnt a great deal from it. It is unfortunate that it is no longer regularly updated. One of his thoughts that really stuck with me is his view on ideas vs executions. To quote him: “Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution.”. I think this captures 2 very important things about creating something.

First, ideas alone are not really worth anything, the idea has to be actually put into practice if you really want to get something out of the idea (more ideas, learning, recognition, money, whatever). Everyone has ideas about things, very few actually execute on their ideas, fewer still get something for just providing the idea.

Second, quality of execution is what is really important, there are many media, products, companies out there that had an original idea and executed on it poorly and thought the idea was worthless. Some time later somebody else tries again but with a better quality or better focus and are successful (though hard to describe, we know quality when we see it).

The Apple Newton was iPhone before technology was there to deliver with a high enough quality.

To me this concept is important, for things I really care about I try to focus very strongly on the quality for what I do. I try to take care of the details. In my programming career I focus on the quality of my work because it leaves better lasting impression then poor work done faster (people will quickly forget it was done fast). For this website for example I’m trying to keep it minimal as I don’t have the time to do fancy features properly, but I also want it to show some originality to make me more invested in it.

It also encourages one to try and share ideas, and to help others with their ideas. Very few people are interested in stealing your ideas and few still could execute on it if they did. When people are sharing ideas it is also better to suggest where the quality could be improve rather then if the idea is good or not. You can advice them on delivering their idea better and not sound critical as asking if their idea is good in the first place.

I have lots notebooks for those eventual ideas of mine...

In this spirit I’m going to start sharing ideas for games that I have. It will provide me a place to document my thoughts, share them with those who are interested and if someone wants to use one then I’ll be able to see one of my ideas in action! It will also help me generate content for this site and maybe encourage me to execute on my ideas by fleshing them out more.