big ideas are cheap

I've definitely succumbed to small ideas before.

They can keep you imprisoned playing in a finite game when what you need is the wide open pasture of an infinite game.

They can restrict your ambition and put a ceiling on your learning and trajectory.

They're not always a waste of time though.

Elon Musk is renowned for pursuing Big Ideas. Since university he's pursued the same things, expressing his interest in them in different business ventures. They are the internet, sustainable energy, interplanetary travel, genetics and artificial intelligence.

What united all his pursuits though was just one idea, one that sounds actually quite small and humble.

He wants 'to be useful'.

This small idea informs all his big ideas. Is this useful to someone?

Kanye West, another guy with big ideas, warns about limiting your own ambitions to a specific group of people.

People always say that you can't please everybody. I think that's a cop-out. Why not attempt it? 'Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

You might not manage to please everyone but in attempting to do so, you'll probably please more than you would have otherwise. West wants to democratise his designs, bringing his expensive taste to the masses by improving his processes until eventually the world hears Yeezy, wears Yeezy and lives in a Yeezy house.

This is where the bigness of an idea, of an ambition, is a benefit. Big ideas get people talking. Big ideas enable people to rally around them. They're inspirational and by being big, they have less competition. When big ideas are aligned in the vision of an individual, they feed off each other and become a coherent body of work rather than different ventures. Bringing them together compounds their growth.

It's just that they need a small idea at the heart of them.

Be useful.

a series of expansions on The DO Lectures - ‘It’s Just Me’ Manifesto