Why many ideas never see light of day

Nothing ever happens without that spark of an idea. An inspiration strikes out of nowhere while you are sipping coffee. Chatting with a friend. Just when you wake up after an insightful dream. While cruising on the highway.

Just at that moment, you feel a little flutter in your heart. The feeling says, wouldn't it be amazing if you did this?

And then soon after, your rational mind takes over. Barking, what the hell are you thinking? You don't have the time or money. What would everyone think if you fail. Imagine the shame and embarrassment. Remember that last time when they said no...it'll be too hard...

Whether it's in business or in life, there's a reason why many great ideas never see light of day. They continue to hide endlessly within the secret chambers of your heart (or your mind).

That reason is simply this: you don't take action.

When you don't act, the original inspiration that gave you the idea changes shape. You don't feel the same feeling anymore. Because it gets mixed up with fear and self-doubt. After a few days or years, the same idea fails to have the original appeal.

You begin to think that it was good that you never acted on it. Because it wasn't such a good idea anyways. If it was then you would've acted in the first place.

Silly circular logic.

Deep inside you know the real truth: you didn't act on your inspiration.

You'd rather shove this truth bug under the rug. But the bug never really goes away. It stays.

And one day when you are least expecting it, the bug surfaces. May be you see someone doing exactly what you wanted to do. Or you flip a magazine and an ad reconnects you back to what you could've done. Or a smell reminds you of a time when you wanted to say something to someone but didn't.

You exactly know what I'm talking about.

The voice inside begins to blame you. You never acted when you could. Now look at you. You are too fat or too old to do that. You have too many responsibilities to startup without worrying about money. Look at that guy who looks so lame but he's living your idea.

So what exactly do you do? At that point...

Take a baby-step. You don't have to take a big, giant step. You simply take a small, little step. And divide that step into a tiny actions.

Then act on it.

Say for example, you have an idea to create a community of like-minded people in your industry. To mobilize collective action. You get this idea to build a platform where people can share and learn.

But fear in your mind immediately stops you by saying, who would be interested in joining you? Plus where would you get all that money and time?

That's when you know you got to act.

Today. Or, may be right now.

Or suffer the destiny of your idea never seeing light of day.

Example of #HIT-NEXT: from nothing to something really exciting

Here's a recent example from idea to action.

The #HIT-NEXT conference started as a random, what-if conversation with us and SIES College of Management. An idea for a different kind of health IT gathering in India. Other than the venue, we had no budgets, no speakers, no topics...nothing.

We had certain keywords we wanted to explore: artificial intelligence, apps, data, health IT ecosystem, clinicians, technologists, startups...

And this rhetorical question: what if we got all the cool people in healthcare technology under the same roof?

The idea took shape because of small actions. By people who had plenty of other things to do.

Actions like sending emails. Making phone calls to friends and acquaintances. Cold-messaging potential speakers via LinkedIn.

Tiny, little actions. That found their place in between regular workdays.

Several people said no and many never responded. Of course.

But a few began to say yes. And the yes-es added up.

Snowballing.

Within 10 days, we had an agenda that was full to the brim. The #HIT-NEXT idea became a real breathing, tangible thing with a form of its own.

Without action, an idea is like an unlit candle that sits around. Action is the fire that lights up your ideas. Making them brilliant. And useful to people around.