Why We Tend to Underrate Our Ideas & How to Overcome Such Feeling

Creators do this thing with their ideas all the time.

They discard their work from time to time.

It doesn’t matter how far in they’ve gone on the project.

Once that feeling is locked in, the work is discarded.

And a new board is mounted.

It is not exactly easy to place a finger on what that feeling is like.

But I will attempt to describe it as that feeling that screams, “This is belittling of my installed capacity” or, “poor for public consumption.”

However, there’s an interesting, sometimes confusing bent to the whole thing.

The thing is, while you are busy underrating your work or idea, another person is at some corner, screaming, “Genius” or, “Great idea.”

I have a feeling you are conversant with this kind of feeling, right?

There must have been scenarios in which you’ve watched people marvel at the quality of your thoughts or ideas. And they wonder how you come up with brilliant ideas almost at the snap of a finger, right?

If you ever had to feel that way, it turns out you are not alone in that boat. It’s a common feeling among creators reveals Derek Sivers, the celebrated founder of CD Baby.

Here’s how he captured his own experience and why that sort of feeling tends to rear its head in creators.

In the same breath, he proposed how to handle such feeling.

“Any creator of anything knows this feeling:
You experience someone else’s innovative work. It’s beautiful, brilliant, breath-taking. Their ideas are unexpected and surprising, but perfect.
You think, “I never would have thought of that. How do they even come up with that? It’s genius!”

My ideas are so obvious. I’ll never be as inventive as that.”
I get this feeling often. Amazing books, music, movies, or even amazing conversations. I’m in awe at how the creator thinks like that. I’m humbled.

But I continue to do my work. I tell my little tales. I share my point of view. Nothing spectacular. Just my ordinary thoughts.
One day someone emailed me and said, “I never would have thought of that. How did you even come up with that? It’s genius!

Of course I disagreed and explained why it was nothing special.
But afterwards, I realized something surprisingly profound:
Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them.
I’ll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they were playing or saying was pretty obvious.

So maybe what’s obvious to me is amazing to someone else?
Hit songwriters often admit that their most successful hit song was one they thought was just stupid, even not worth recording.
We’re clearly bad judges of our own creations. We should just put them out there and let the world decide.”

Credit: sive.rs/obvious