When You Think Your Ideas Are Too Obvious to Share

Last Friday. My desk. 11am.

I open my content calendar and stare at my list of topics for this week.

I start scrolling.

Too basic. Skip.

Everyone knows this. Skip.

Why would I even post that. Skip.

I get to the bottom of the list. I have skipped everything.

I close the laptop.

I get up and find something, anything, to do that is not writing. I stare out the window. I come back to the desk.

I open the laptop again. Same list. Same feeling.

I scroll through my old Kindle highlights, looking for a spark.

Then I see it.

A Derek Sivers post I have never forgotten: your ideas feel obvious to you. To someone else, they are amazing.

I read it again.

I open the list again. Same topics. But something looks different now.

I think about the DMs and in-person conversations I have received after posts I almost did not publish. The ones I thought were too simple. Too obvious. Not worth anyone's time.

"This is exactly what I needed today."

"I have been doing this for two years and never thought about it this way."

"How did you know I was struggling with this?"

I did not know. I almost did not post it.

This is my sixth year as a full-time entrepreneur. My eleventh if you count the years I was building on the side.

But somewhere out there, someone is in their first. Overwhelmed. Googling things I stopped Googling years ago. Looking for someone to just say the quiet part out loud.

Your ordinary is someone else's extraordinary.

Whatever you are sitting on because you think everyone already knows it, they do not.

Open the list. Pick one. Post it.