I will have you know, in case you didn’t already, that I conceived of the idea for Shelf Life and began this endeavor in September of 2020, before our lands were beset by these years of plague. Now: I’m obviously not saying it’s a good thing they were (beset by years of plague). That was, overall, a bad thing. But probably lucky for Shelf Life, which might not still be going if I had any other kind of life (eg, social).
I had something like 80 topics written down when I began writing Shelf Life and I have now written more than 250 essays and I still have a backlog of 67 topics in the can to write about. For every Shelf Life I write I think of like three more I want to write. Shelf Life is a little like the hydra in that respect, and I have cut off too many heads, and created an unstoppable monster. Woe is me.
I’ve learned and improved a lot of skills in the last couple of years, essay writing among them. I’ve also re-learned a lot of old ones, and mastered—or at least significantly improved—skills I had before that I had left standing at “mediocre” for years. I feel like I’ve put the time to good use. Lots of naps notwithstanding. Naps are also a good use of time!
It’s not a Shelf Life anniversary or anything. Don’t worry! You didn’t forget Shelf Life’s birthday. I’m bringing this up to reference later in discussion of “Idea Guy.” I’ll get around to that in a bit.
But, yeah, Shelf Life topic ideas abound. When I had my initial list of 80 topics I told myself, this is fine, if I never have another topic idea after that, 80 essays is still a lot of essays and I can just stop then and be pleased with my accomplishment. Then I got a lot of topic ideas from considering and answering questions in Facebook writing groups, so when I quit Facebook over a year ago I was worried that without that bottomless well of questions to consider I might run out of topics but that concern, too, proved to be unfounded.
The mental image I would like to instill today is that of teens in the nineteen fifties stuffing themselves into a phone booth to see how many they can fit. Why? I don’t know why anyone did that. At least they were not eating Tide pods? Don’t look at me: My generation collected pogs, and while I agree that was dumb, I don’t see it on the same level of dumb as stuffing oneself and all other immediately available humans into a phone booth or VW Beetle. Every generation has its dumb fads.
Then again, considering the rabid consumerism of pog-collecting and all the other fads of the nineties (Beanie Babies, Pokémon and other trading cards, slap bracelets, Magic Eye posters, No Fear t-shirts) maybe my generation was the dumb one. At least eating Tide Pods is a fad you can do with only things you already have around your house.
Anyway today I want to talk about Idea Guy and Execution Guy. For the purposes of this thought experiment, I am using “guy” in a gender-non-specifying way, like “folks” but singular. Idea Guy and Execution Guy could be men, women, girls, boys, or all or none of the above.
The idea (heh) is that Idea Guy has ideas. Like, tons of ideas. Idea Guy has ideas piling out of their head like teenyboppers from a phone booth. Idea Guy’s specialty is coming up with ideas.
Execution Guy, on the other hand, is someone who has the expertise, the sticktoitiveness, and maybe the other resources—that is, the wherewithal—to make ideas into reality. Execution Guy is someone who can take an idea and execute on it.
Naturally, Idea Guy thinks the move is to pair up with Execution Guy. Idea Guy can supply the idea and Execution Guy—with input and creative direction from Idea Guy!—can execute it.
I am an editor, a producer of books, and a writer. My partner and many of my friends are tech experts. And I also went to art school so I know an unusually large number of artists. Here are the common refrains:
I have a great idea for a book, can you write it?
I have an idea for an amazon graphic novel, can you draw it?
I have an idea for a killer app, can you develop it?
Here is what Idea Guy has failed to account for: Execution Guy is also, themself, an Idea Guy.
Everyone is an Idea Guy. Pretty much everyone. I really think that anyone who believes they are not an Idea Guy—that they don’t come up with enough ideas or quality ideas—can be trained to become an idea machine. I’m willing to say everyone. Everyone is Idea Guy.
Ideas don’t have any value. I won’t go into a lot of detail on why (there’s a hyperlink right there) but ideas, themselves, have no value. In large part because everyone is Idea Guy. Everyone can come up with their own ideas, as many as they could ever want or need.
As a result, Execution Guy is in extremely high demand and Idea Guy is in . . . literally not in demand. If you’re thinking “but at my company, the Execution Guys who do all the work make less money than the Idea Guys at the top who don’t do anything but sit around and have ideas for the Execution Guys to execute!” Well there’s two ways to get to be that Idea Guy at the top, the honest way is to be an outstanding Execution Guy and work your way up and the other way is pretty much cronyism/nepotism.
Anyway don’t “at me.” You can’t rock up to the HR department at a random company and demand to be the CEO because you have a lot of great ideas for how the company should run, and you also can’t rock up to and Execution Guy and demand that they execute your idea in exchange for the privilege of working on your idea. Execution Guy has their own ideas. They don’t need yours.
It is possible and ethical to get an Execution Guy to execute your idea. It’s this thing called hiring their services in exchange for cash money.
Execution Guy brings something valuable to the table: The ability to execute the idea, which almost certainly includes some kind of specialized skill they possess that not everybody does, for instance, knowing programming languages or being able to draw or write well. This skill has a value that can be expressed in money. Oftentimes, Execution Guy gets approached for this kind of thing by Idea Guy because this kind of thing is literally Execution Guy’s day job. Like “Hey don’t you build apps for App Mart Co? I have a great idea for an app, let’s make an app together!”
In this scenario, where making apps is Execution Guy’s day job, they are already accustomed to receiving money in exchange for making apps. They know the value of the skill they possess. It is how they earn their living.
Idea Guy does not have a similarly valuable skill in their ability to generate ideas. If they did, Idea Guy would, perhaps, be receiving remuneration for these ideas. But ideas are not valuable until they have been executed (and sometimes not even then!). Hence, Idea Guy wants to work with Execution Guy to turn the idea into something of value.
The issue is that Idea Guy is bringing like 1 percent of the value to the table (and that’s being generous) and expecting Execution Guy to put in the other 99 percent of the value—and Execution Guy didn’t need that 1 percent in the first place. Execution Guy already has that 1 percent of the contribution that Idea Guy is offering.
I want to be explicit: I am not describing a collaboration where both parties bring an equal amount of value to the endeavor in the form of specialized skills. I am describing a situation where someone is bringing an idea and not much else (again, perhaps they want to bring some “creative direction” that they probably are not actually qualified to contribute) and expecting the skills and expertise of their “partner” to carry off the entire endeavor.
Okay, what am I getting at: Are you Idea Guy? Do you have ideas jammed in your skull like the cast of Rebel Without a Cause into a phone both? And no way to execute them? I have good news. Just as Execution Guy is also Idea Guy—or may learn to become Idea Guy—so can Idea Guy become Execution Guy.
This hearkens back to the message from the beginning of today’s article, which is that with enough time all things can be accomplished. Think of the Bill Murray character in Groundhog Day who has infinite time and learns to play the piano, speak French, and make ice sculptures. That’s fiction, of course, and in reality everyone is working with a limited amount of time. That’s why I said with enough time—because we don’t all have enough time to accomplish all things. Memento mori.
If you read Shelf Life, it’s probably because you write and you want to get better at writing. The other main reason for reading is you’re my friend or family member and you’re humoring me. I appreciate you. Writers are natural Idea Guys but we have to be Execution Guys too, unless we have ghostwriter money just laying around, if we ever want our ideas to see the light of day. Most of us are not hurting for ideas. If we’re hurting, it’s probably resources to execute on all those ideas we have.
To become Execution Guy, Idea Guy needs two things:
The ability or expertise to execute your idea; for instance, if your idea is a novel, you need writing ability or expertise.
The aforementioned quality of sticktoitiveness; that is, the ability to persevere in your work on a project, even when it is boring, hard, or frustrating, or when you are distracted by something else.
All of Shelf Life is your oyster when it comes to writing ability and/or expertise. Some writing tips you can pick up from reading but, more often, Shelf Life wants to point you toward resources for learning and improving—practice, classes, exercises, and so on.
Sticktoitiveness is what Idea Guy usually needs to learn; Idea Guy is constantly churning out shiny new ideas that distract from whatever they are working on. It can be really tempting to set aside the manuscript you’re elbows deep into in favor of the new and exciting idea you just came up with. This isn’t because the new idea is necessarily better (sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not)—but writing the manuscript is a lot harder and less glamorous than coming up with a new idea and developing it. It’s easy to tell yourself you’re turning away from the current idea because the new idea is better, but a lot of times what’s really happening is you’re turning away from what’s hard because the new thing is easier.
To that end, I have some strategies that I use, as Idea Guy myself, to stay focused on what I’m doing and not let myself be tempted by new ideas jumping out at me every five minutes like the bad guy in a horror movie. I’ll share these strategies in Thursday’s Shelf Life, making this kind of a half a two-parter but not really because they’re not named Part I and Part II.
Just between us, we’ll know they go together.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
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