When is it ok to say NO to good ideas?
"A life left unpruned grows wild."
Every morning, I take the dog out for a walk for an hour or so. No earbuds, phone off, just a book under my arm, a pencil in my pocket and a poop-bag in my hand.
Some of the best creative ideas I’ve ever had have come to me in these first hours after waking, often while sitting and reading, or watching my Frenchie coerce a golden retriever thrice his size to wrestle. (he always loses.) After letting my mind run wild, I walk home with marginalia scribbled in the book, along with the flyleaf covered in other ideas that might be good for ‘when I get time.’
The critical problem with this is, if I do the calculation on how much time I actually have to attempt all of these ‘brilliant’ ideas, I really only have time for 20% of them- and that’s if I’m really disciplined. (I’m not.)1
For that reason, it’s important not to be precious about ideas that seem great but don’t really serve your big-picture goals as a creator. (You have to work those out on your own.) To that end, you need to give up being precious about those ideas and be able to simply let them go —or better yet— share them with a friend or collaborator for whom you think it would be a better fit.2
“A life left unpruned can become a twisted knot of ideas, tasks, and projects competing for your limited time and resources. If you don’t prune some of the branches from your life, the important ones will never flourish.”
3We’re all here for a fleeting blip of time; You’ll never read all the books, blog posts or loyally commit to all the ideas you have in your lifetime. You may as well share good ideas with interesting, talented people instead of letting them slip back into the ether to land on someone else’s ever-growing To-Do list.
Capturing ideas you have is important. Curating them is essential.
Pruning your ideas to dedicate your time wisely is a skill that takes years to develop but pays off in spades once you get good at it. I’m not sure anyone ever quite ‘masters’ it, but cultivating the ability to say ‘no’ to good ideas that don’t serve your wider purpose is one of the most invaluable skills you’ll ever possess.
Happy pruning!
‘til next time!
Your pal,
“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease.
Hack away at the unessential.”
~ Bruce Lee
Join my 30-day annual “NO-Vember” challenger below, to cultivate the ability to say NO to shit. 👇
This concept is a little different from “Kill Your Darlings” which I’ll cover in a later post.
In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert shares a story about an idea for a novel she had about a woman caught in a web of crime in the Amazon. She researched it but never wrote the book. Later, she met Ann Patchett, who had independently conceived a strikingly similar story. Gilbert believes ideas are living entities that seek out the right creator—if one person ignores or delays, the idea moves on to someone else. This experience reinforced her belief that creativity is a mystical force and that artists must act when inspiration strikes.
This quote, while eloquently phrased by gardener and writer Elizabeth Roth, actually stems (heh) from a much older quote: “A life left unpruned grows wild.” from Douglas Wilson, a Christian theologian and pastor. The idea behind it is that without intentional discipline, refinement, or correction, a life (or a person) can become unruly, directionless, or overgrown with distractions and bad habits—much like an unpruned plant or tree.