Ideas that Shouldn't Be Dismissed

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I have a ton of ideas always flying through my head. I have so many ideas that I can't always catch them before they disappear. Originally I kept most of these ideas  to myself. That was a good bit ago, but around the time I was in seventh grade I was getting tired of keeping things to myself. In seventh grade I met avery strange person that was very outgoing and a bit on the odd side. He didn't care what anyone thought of his weird imagination. He would spout stories at the lunch table that were very amusing. There were stories about hippos with rocket launchers and monkeys that sang. He was very outward with all his ideas.
He inspired me to keep a notebook of all my ideas. This would have been a good idea, it was for a while, until I had gotten so used to writing down all my ideas that I began to run through a 70 page notebook in under a week.  When I had noticed that i had about ten or twelve notebooks in my bookbag I realized two things. The first thing that i realized was that having that many books could not be good for my back. More importantly, as i looked through them I saw all the ideas I had sketched in the last month to that day, some of these inventions were rediculous. It wasn't all weird but thinking back I realize that something that I thought would be a cool idea was in retrospect a complete waste of paper.  But there are so many good ideas I had as well. Things that i should have acted on but didn't things that should have been obvious but simply were not noticed.
If I could have acted on every one of those ideas i would be completely overwhelmed by my work that it would be impossible for me to function.  If you have one idea that you want to dedicate your time to then by all means run with it, but there are ideas that are very good ideas but you dont have the time or desire to get on it. Those few amazing ideas should not be dismissed, but dont act on every idea or you are due to end up in a hole. Instead of keeping them to yourself, share your ideas with someone. Maybe your idea will be noticed and somebody will go through with it. When that happens you can quietly say "I came up with that" and be glad that it went through.

Related articles

• "I don't have any good ideas" (sethgodin.typepad.com)
• Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson (konigi.com)
• Motherlode: Punishing a Bad Report Card? (parenting.blogs.nytimes.com)