You Don't Have to Build It All At Once

How the best ideas don't usually start that way, and why it matters to us.

Have you ever thought about what would have happened if the Wright brothers decided not to invent the airplane, just because it couldn’t carry several hundred passengers all the way around the world?

What if Alexander Graham Bell didn’t invent the telephone because he couldn’t invent the computer and the internet at the same time?

What if John Deere didn’t start his farm implement company because he didn’t have autosteer yet?

And, perhaps most important of all: what will happen if you fail to bring your new ideas to the world, simply because they aren’t as good or as complete or as brilliant as you would like them to be?

I was recently reminded of this idea by a panelist at a farmer-focused event, where the key topics were Sustainable Aviation Fuel and the 45Z tax credit. This particular panelist was emphasizing the importance of advancing initial legislation, even if it isn’t perfect, because there never will be a perfect bill; in order to improve something, you have to have something to improve. This is true across just about all domains, and now that I’m paying attention to it, I’m seeing it everywhere in my own life. You can’t improve your deadlift form until you actually start deadlifting: no amount of watching videos and reading articles can perfect your form until you start actually trying. It’s pretty hard to refine a business plan until you have something on paper, no matter how elementary it looks when you begin. You can’t build on an idea with your team unless someone actually voices the idea out loud, getting past the fear that it might not be a good idea in the first place.

Since early on in college, I’ve wanted to start an informal Bible study with friends. I loved the idea of getting together to study, discuss, and pray with others who share my core beliefs. Care to guess how long it took me to actually do this? Just a good five years or so. And ultimately, it was my friend who pushed us to get started, not even myself. No, I was too worried about knowing how to do it and doing it right and needing to look like I was qualified to be in charge.

Why do we do this? We have an idea, and we often go through the same phases of reaction to our idea. First, we’re so excited! We think our idea is awesome and we can’t wait to tell everyone about it. But then, we continue thinking about our idea, and the doubts creep in. “What if this is actually stupid?” we think to ourselves. “Better to just keep it to myself in case I get ridiculed or shrugged off for it.” Sometimes we can talk ourselves back out of the fear, but if you’re anything like me, it’s pretty tough to land anywhere close to our first impression of our idea. I think this often results from our pride more than anything.

Now, this isn’t to say our ideas are all fantastic from the get-go; no, it’s to say they may not be all that wonderful, but the best ideas often don’t start that way. They start as a mediocre idea that someone shared with their team, or their friends, or their class, and rather than a competition about who can manufacture a better idea on their own, we build on the original idea together to create something more brilliant than any one of us could have come up with on our own. Even the famous inventors whose names we remember often weren’t working alone; there were often friends, peers, or family members who were the sounding board for ideas. Gifted authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien spent hours in long discussions with other writers (the group came to be known as the Inklings) while each developed their widely-acclaimed worlds of Narnia and Middle Earth.

So, what does this mean for you? Are you working on a group project in class and struggling to get started because no one wants to throw out the first idea? Try being the first idea, and don’t get too worked up if your less-than-perfect first idea actually turns into something completely different as the group refines the end result. Thinking of starting your own Substack blog? Get some ideas together, start writing, and then just start publishing—you’ll inevitably get a few years in and look back at your first posts and cringe a bit, but that will happen whether you start publishing now or a year from now. Do you have an idea for trying a new initiative with a customer? Start making some phone calls to teammates and start working out the idea, and take it to the customer even if you don’t think it’s perfect yet: if you build it together, it will serve them more effectively than if you tried to present a perfectly-built plan, anyway.

While you and I might not be writing the next Lord of the Rings trilogy or building critical infrastructure for the next era of jet fuel, we each have our purpose here on this earth, and we each have an obligation to carry it out to the best of our ability. While it may seem counterintuitive, I believe this responsibility requires us to start putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboards, or words to the phone, before we really know what we’re doing. What are you waiting for?

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Journal Prompt of the Week

In what area of you life have you been hesitant to start sharing your ideas because you worry they’re not good enough yet? What are you going to do about it?