Your Smart Friends Are Killing Your Best Ideas
On butterfly ideas, and why the most promising thoughts die before they ever learn to fly
You know that moment when you’re doing absolutely nothing, maybe showering, maybe staring at the ceiling at 2am and suddenly something clicks in your head?
Two random things connect and you go, wait, what if...
It’s not a fully formed thought.
You couldn’t write a presentation about it.
It’s just a feeling pulling you in a direction. But something about it feels right.
So you tell someone. Usually the smartest person you know. Because obviously they’ll see what you see, right?
Nope.
They go straight into debug mode. “Yeah but what about this?” “That won’t work because of that.” “I read somewhere that actually…”
And just like that, it’s gone.
They feel like they helped.
You feel like you shouldn’t have bothered.
And neither of you will ever find out if that little spark could’ve become something real.
We all do this. We expect every idea to show up fully ready, backed by logic, supported by evidence, dressed in a suit.
But that’s not how ideas work. A thought you had 3 minutes ago isn’t the same as one you’ve been chewing on for 3 months. One can handle some pushing around. The other needs you to just... not squeeze it to death.
So this week’s share exactly calls these as butterfly ideas and honestly, that’s the perfect name for it. It also has a surprisingly simple fix for how we keep accidentally killing them in conversation.
Read here: Butterfly Ideas
That’s it for this week
Manoj
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