Idea Investment Meeting
Make competing ideas earn your commitment before you invest.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 96%
Treat each creative idea as an applicant seeking an investment of your limited time, money, and attention. Ask the idea to specify what it wants to become, why it deserves support, and what completing it will require. Vague ideas return to incubation rather than displacing active work. Once you commit, recognize that a newer idea will naturally feel fresher because it has not yet entered the difficult middle. Switching is justified more readily when you have repeatedly demonstrated that you can finish projects; a large inventory of abandoned work is evidence that novelty, rather than judgment, may be driving the decision. The mechanism converts emotional attraction into explicit comparison and uses completion history as a guardrail against chronic project hopping.
Origin
Elizabeth Gilbert described evaluating ideas like an angel investor during The Tim Ferriss Show.
Core principles
- 01Inspiration does not automatically deserve investment.
- 02New ideas often seem attractive because they have not encountered difficulty.
- 03Past completion behavior should inform whether quitting is legitimate.
- 04A serious idea can explain what it needs and why it matters.
How to run it
- 1
Inventory the candidates
Write down every idea currently competing for your time, including the project already underway.
- 2
Request a proposal
Ask each idea what it wants you to make, why it matters, and what resources it requires.
- 3
Check your completion record
Review whether you generally finish what you start. Treat a long list of abandoned projects as evidence that switching may repeat a pattern.
- 4
Select the strongest investment
Choose the proposal that is sufficiently formed, worthwhile, and feasible with your available life force.
- 5
Protect the commitment
Continue through the predictable stale phase while capturing new ideas for later review.
In the wild
A writer halfway through a difficult memoir becomes excited by an undefined idea about birds. In an idea meeting, the memoir can identify its audience, central question, remaining chapters, and completion date. The bird idea cannot yet specify a thesis or format, so it returns to incubation while the memoir retains the investment.
→ The writer finishes the memoir without losing the newer idea.
Common mistakes
Funding novelty instead of substance
A fresh idea feels better partly because it has not yet accumulated constraints, uncertainty, or repetitive work.
Treating every inspiration as an assignment
An idea arriving with emotional force does not prove that it deserves immediate execution.
Ignoring completion history
Someone with many unfinished projects should demand stronger evidence before abandoning another one.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for creators who have several ideas and a history of unfinished work.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when an existing project has become unsafe, unethical, impossible, or strategically irrelevant.
From the transcript
“I give you permission to quit working on that first project, but only if you have a proven track record of ever being able to…”
“So, you know, stick with the one you came to the dance with.”
“It's like I'm the angel investor, and these ideas are like, you know, we want your time and money for this.”
From the episode
#878: How to Start When You're Stuck, Finish What You Begin, and Stop Waiting for Inspiration — Creative Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Lamott and More