Good Ideas Solve Real Problems

Ideas are not that important. My books – the one I published 3 years ago and the one I will publish in 5 weeks – are not that important. What is important is me, 18 years ago, and the problem I faced in that book aisle.

It’s easy to think ideas are the thing. It’s the ideas people will share with me – their idea for the book the want to write, the class they want to teach, the nonprofit they want to start, and the art they want to create. It’s ideas the media praises. Tesla! Lip kits! Shoes made from recycled plastic! What was that movie everyone was talking about in the 90s with slo-mo acrobatics around flying bullets. Oh, right. The Matrix!

But ideas are fleeting things with expiration dates. What constitutes a good one right now might not next year, or, depending on your industry, tomorrow. And sometimes, they’re more hype than helpful. Laserdisc, anyone?

What does have stickiness are problems – the real problems real people have. They’re also what people care about.

I learned this my first semester of teaching college. The first time we do anything, it’s hard not to make it about us, and that’s what I did … all semester long, apparently. The students’ reviews were not good. I can still see the one written in all caps in No. 2 pencil – NEVER LET BETH TROY TEACH AGAIN – and that student was right. If I continued to teach class as the BT show, I had no business teaching again.

If I wanted to teach better, I needed to set aside my ideas for what made a great classroom experience and see what problems the students were experiencing instead. In an Ancient History class, there were several. Like, history is so boring! How is it relevant to my life? Where does the teacher get off grading me if she doesn’t know my name? Why does my college make me take this stupid course?

I listened, and I learned. The problems inspired the ideas, and the ideas became more about the students and less about me, though I got better at teaching, too. Have I told you the story of the student who came into my class wanting to go into law enforcement and left wanting to be a history teacher? It’s true!

So …

For those of you who want to do something but are not sure what, I have a question. What problems do you care about? Where, if there’s an article on it, you’re reading it? What problem lights a fire in you every.single.time, and you can’t help but add your two cents every.single.time.? I don’t know what form your idea is going to take, but I bet it’s going to come from this problem. Start here!

For those of you who started something but now feel stuck, I have a question. Did you fall in love with the problem or with your idea? Remember, the latter has an expiration date (think: chia pets) and the former has staying power. Tell yourself the story of the problem as much as possible! For example, I’m not always jazzed about my writing. Sometimes, I’m so unjazzed I’d rather file my nails. So, I ask myself – why am I writing again? I better have a reason and that reason had better go beyond the current story to the women who don’t know God yet but might find the trail through this story. There’s power in that “yet” for me – much more than the story itself. It keeps me writing.

For those of you who question whether you’re making an impact, I have a question. Did you define what that impact would be? It’s important to clarify this, and it’s even more important to clarify impact around the problem itself. Impact isn’t necessarily the number of Instagram followers, money in the bank, promotions, and every other upward-and-to-the-right rhetoric we’re fed in our success-obsessed culture. If good ideas solve real problems than impact is problem solved – for 10000, 1000, or 1.

For those of you who seek to get better at what you do, I have a question. How geeked out are you about the problem, circa now? Are you staying current on how people are talking about it, now? How diverse are your sources? Conversations around gender, race, privilege, religion, politics (oh, let’s throw in money, too!) change all the time. We need to keep up. We need to learn from those who agree and those who disagree with us. I know of no way to get better than by following the natural curiosity implicit in learning.

Good ideas solve real problems. Period!

Which of the above descriptions describes where you are right now?

What problems are you experiencing in solving problems?

Comment below and tell me how I can help!

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!