Ideas vs. Time: how long does an idea take to develop?
People often ask writers and filmmakers how long they worked on their most recent project.
The mistake made is people think in terms of calendar time, instead of time spent actually working on the project. A month can go by where zero hours of work on the project happen. But on the other end of the spectrum, a week can go by where 80 or 90 hours are spent working on the project. Calendar time vs. Working time are often two different values.
This means if someone says "It took me a year to write the book" that could mean a wide range of actual time invested.
For most of my books so far, it took a year of full time effort. About 6 months to write a first draft, 6 weeks to write a second, and the rest for revisions, copyediting and promotion.
50 weeks x 40 hours = 2000 hours.
It's worthwhile for people with 1000 great ideas to think about that number. You find similar numbers for making movies, startup companies, albums, games, novels, or anything of note.
How many hours are you willing to put into delivering on your idea?
The greatness of an idea is irrelevant if you don't put in the hours needed to see it to fruition.
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