Last night, for the first time in a while, I got to hang out with my roommate and just talk. We played chess and took turns firing ideas back and forth at one another. It was a sobering reminder that the majority of the ideas I jot down are not the finest to exist. It’s the nature of capturing ideas on the fly that some are going to fold under scrutiny. Despite sassy comments of “that already exists” from my roommate, I’m still going to jot them down at nearly obsessive rates because the alternative gives me a level of terror and anxiety. The alternative being that I lose some thought that could be meaningful. 

I have a small blue notebook in my desk, it’s sort of a proto-version of my current system for capturing thoughts. I had it in college and you can tell that by the number of nonsensical ideas it holds. Even compared to my current version of this, it’s rough. It’s the kind of stuff you read and immediately imagine high college students bantering “BROOOOO — What if…” But within this notebook from 2015, there is an entry titled “MINI VIDEO STRING WEBSITE” where I describe stringing content from multiple creators each under 3 minutes into one long stretched video that keeps playing and playing. It could be skippable and would be automatically prioritized for the user. It’s a very basic imagination of what would end up being Tiktok or Reels. 

I joke to friends that I invented Tiktok, but of course that’s untrue. My idea was missing an emphasis on the algorithm that made TikTok an institution. I also, and this is important, did zero to actualize this concept. Could I have developed something similar to what we see today? Maybe. I don’t know.

Now I write everything down in hopes I’ll capture a prototype idea that could catch fire. The tough question is knowing an idea’s importance early, and the toughest is actually putting concepts into motion. As much as I feel Steve Jobs is over-romanticized, he was absolutely right when he said “it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work… There is just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get in the subtleties of it.”

For me this is quintessentially true, In my nature I have the risk of taking pride in the ideas I have – hell, this entire post is just so I can brag about this old idea – but at the end of the day that just means very little. Who cares if I didn’t get up and actualize it. 

There’s that word again – Actualize. 

I first heard of this concept in high school Psychology. It’s probably where you heard it too, in relation to a very specific guy named Abraham Maslow. If you’re rusty on this, Maslow invented the Hierarchy of Needs™. Maslow was trying to show that actualization relies on both physical needs and mental satisfaction. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL is obviously incomplete as it does not contain a good YouTube video to watch with your meal

I had an issue with this on sight. It’s like one of those images where the more you stare at it the more you see everything wrong with it. Why have 5 levels, why not 8? Or 3? To me it all seems highly subjective and like one of those things that’s impossible to prove or disprove. It reminds me of self help gurus who come up with hierarchies on how to tackle stress or procrastination. 

So how do I get to the bottom of this? How am I actually supposed to Actualize all these ideas? To solve this I used my usual method. I drafted a snarky email to Dr. Douglas Kenrick asking what the deal is. Dr. Kenrick is a PhD professor at ASU who has written over 200 articles and books around Psychology for decades. Including one that caught my eye: Rebuilding Maslow’s Pyramid on an Evolutionary Foundation. He redid it, based on a more informed design. Let me quote that article linked above: “Self-actualization does not appear in the new pyramid, not because it’s not interesting and important, but because it is not fundamental.” To me this is an indictment of Maslow’s subjectivity, but Dr. Kenrick disagrees.

“It’s a big question, or set of questions. Was Maslow’s choice just subjective?  No, it was based on logical analysis and what was known at the time.  His main argument was against the Behaviorist case that all social motives were originally founded on simple physiological needs like hunger, and his advisor Harlow had shown (in the classic studies on monkeys with cloth and wire “mothers” that attachment comfort was unrelated to feeding.)  And he thought needs for esteem and safety were separable from affiliation motives.“

So – unfortunately Maslow, while not perfect, did apparently advance psychology with his triangle. Fine. Regardless, actualization is nowhere to be found on Dr. Kenrick’s new version. With his model actualization isn’t the penultimate, fundamental human need. Parenting is. I think I’m going to have to figure out how to actualize these ideas on my own. It does force the question – why am I even doing all of this? Why would actualization be a goal for me? That little blue notebook reminds me why. It’s that creeping terror of a lack of potential being filled, or worse, someone else doing it first. It’s a disservice to ourselves as humans to let ideas languish.  We have an obligation to nurture a gravity that will lift our best ideas from the page, and so I will. You should too.

Colin

“I write [ideas] down so I don’t commit suicide later having forgotten the idea. I’ve forgotten probably two or three major ideas, and it’ll make you sick, just horrible. Write the idea down. You’ll say: I’ll never forget this idea. Ah-uh: you can forget them.” – David Lynch