We are a culture that glorifies ideas. In tech circles, everyone wants to discuss the latest tech trends (live-streaming! Drones!) In the movie or publishing industry, thousands of e-mails are exchanged about which genres are hot (fantasy!) and which are not (vampires!) Do a Google search for “The Next Big Idea” and you’ll get 300 million results, many of them blog posts purporting to contain the secret to success. In interviews, candidates are often assessed on the strength of their ideas. At dinner parties, we all love sitting next to the “Idea Person”.
And yet, the people who are most likely to be called “Idea People” from the outside know exactly how little an idea in of itself is worth. [...]
Ideas are like candy—colorful, fun, easy to indulge in.
The hard part—the part that really matters—is the follow-through.
Why don’t we glorify that instead?
What is a Follow-Through Person?
Someone who knows that good execution is 90% of what makes anything succeed.
Someone who values getting shit done.
Someone who honors the craft of getting shit done well.
Someone who recognizes that in order to make the idea live, she must inspire others to also want to make the idea live, through a combination of planning, research, critical thinking, and effort.
Someone who fights the devil in the details every single day.
Someone who does not pat herself on the back when the idea is good, but only when the incarnation of the idea is good.
Someone who does not flinch at the possibility that her idea may not be good enough.
Someone who soldiers on through the hard, the repetitive, the frustrating, the boring, all for the sake of making something real.
Let’s celebrate that person.
Let’s fantasize about being that person.