5 questions to figure out if an idea is good enough.

It’s scary to put an idea out there when it’s been your baby for a long time. At some point you need to take a leap of faith, but how do you know when the time is right?

 

Birds don’t wait until they’re completely grown to try flying for the first time. You can’t wait until your idea is perfect either.

 

Even when they may not be ready, baby birds get tested anyway. That’s the baby-bird principle.

 

How do you know when your ideas are ready to go when you don’t have that instinct?

 

Ask yourself these five questions:

 

When thinking about the idea, do you have anything to add or only things to change?

 

When your idea is beyond adding new stuff and is in the stage of refinement, there’s only so much you can get out of it from your one perspective. It needs to get tested by other people so you can get more data to refine it.

 

What grade would you give the idea?

 

If your grade is a C+ or B- you’re ready to go. You can’t make it perfect until you get more information on how it actually works in the real world.

 

Are you trying to guess what other people will do?

 

To some extent you need to anticipate the response to your idea, but are you trying to guess specific responses? You just can’t know what’s going to happen, that’s when you need to put it in action and see.

 

Are you more worried about being wrong?

 

Fear of failure can prevent that push. If you’re more worried about being wrong than seeing if it works you need to give yourself a push.

 

Do you have greater than 50% belief it’s going to work?

 

Greater than 50% means you have a better chance than a coin toss of it working out, so go for it!