Why the Most Original Ideas Start Out Looking Stupid

The past is full of ideas people thought were stupid that actually ended up altering the course of history.

Think of Thomas Edison. Everyone thought he was crazy until his 2,774th attempt.

Think of Pythagoras. Everyone thought he was crazy until the 3rd century BC when the earth was proven to be round.

It’s these seemingly stupid and moronic ideas that end up changing the world the most. Why? Because people don’t go beyond what is comfortable. And what is not comfortable will always be perceived as weird and strange.

Let’s dive in.

The Pattern of Resistance

New ideas are always strange.

The first iPhone was weird, and so were the first laptops. Think about how confused people were when the automobile was invented!

If you are someone who tries to improve and better your life, you encounter this all the time. People think I’m weird when I tell them I wake up at 4, even though I get enormous amounts of work done because of it.

When ideas run against what people consider “normal”, they immediately default to saying “That’s weird” or “I’m not going to do that”. The first indoor toilet was considered disgusting because people assumed it was an outhouse in a room.

This is caused by the fact that people stay clear of things they don’t understand. If you had never seen a car before and you suddenly saw one coming down a highway, you would run away as fast as you could.

It’s the same with innovation. Until people understand an idea and it no longer seems “novel” or “strange”, they won’t accept it.

Why We Self-Censor

Self-censoring is one of the saddest phenomenon I have come across. What’s worse is most people do it and they have no clue.

Self-censoring is a subconscious habit where people kill ideas before they have time to breathe, simply because they are afraid or being judged or perceived as weird.

Luckily, there are ways to work around this, but I’ll talk about that later.

Another common reason for self-censoring is perfectionism. People simply kill ideas because they aren’t able to finish them completely or polish them 100%.

The reason why this is sad is because 99% of people do this, but they have no clue. Think of all that untapped potential. And the ones that stopped? The inventors. The geniuses.

Steve Jobs. Thomas Edison. Aristotle.

Those are the people who changed life as we know it. Without them who knows where we would be.

Enduring the “Stupid Stage”

If all innovative ideas start out looking stupid, then we need to learn to endure the “stupid stage”.

The only way to do this? Treat all experiments as drafts. Don’t think about what people will think, because you’re probably going to throw the idea out anyway.

On x.com, there is a community called Build in Public. Everyone there has the same philosophy: share early and often.

You can apply this same principle to everything you create. Once you’ve got an MVP (minimum viable product), begin sharing. Share every little update.

You don’t need to do this on X though. You can share with family, friends, or even co-workers. The point is that you share what you’re doing.

And here’s the brutal truth: people are going to laugh. You’re going to find people who just don’t think it’s a good idea. There’s nothing you can do about it. You can minimize this by picking better people to share with, but there will always be people who don’t believe in the “vision”.

In the end, new ideas are going to look weird.

But if that’s the only way innovation moves forward, then it must be endured.

See you in the next one.

-Luke