Something I’m glad I did: Sitting down with a large pad of paper, thinking about all the things that ought to exist, and writing them out as ideas for startups.
Time: 26 minutes for brainstorming (an hour is a long time) plus 90 minutes of research and blog-writing.
At the end of this, I had something like two dozen ideas, most of which were terrible. But a few were promising, and overall, it was a pretty good use of time. If there are things about the world you wish were different, you might enjoy doing the same.
The biggest takeaways from the experiment:
- Almost everything that you can imagine existing with current technology already exists, though it may not have been implemented very well.
- Following from (1): If you wish something existed, Google it. It probably does. (Example: Free wake-up calls from Wakerupper, which may replace my alarm clock.)
Something else that occurred to me:
Many problems in life can be solved if one tries enough new things. The greater challenge seems to be that many people don’t like trying new things. A great meta-invention would be an addictive app that rewards people for trying new things—but how would you convince people who don’t try new things to try it in the first place?
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Most of the ideas are listed below. Steal them if you want to.