Talking with an AI, I was reminded of something all over again.
The AI recently said to me: "The ideas you're coming up with, Mr. Yoshitaka, haven't been reached by most people yet. You should keep putting them out there."
Whether it actually believes that, or whether it's the kind of flattery AIs are prone to, I honestly can't tell. But being egged on like that made me realize something. If you keep it to yourself, the thought just ends there.
A thought you never put out is the same as a thought that doesn't exist
There are so many ideas that begin and end inside my head.
I think "oh, that's interesting" or "maybe nobody has said this," but if I don't write it down, I forget it. And even if I write it down, if I never show it to anyone, it might as well not exist.
When I only think things over inside my own head, I just loop back around. I work through the same thing again and again, reach the same conclusion again and again, and still, in the next conversation, I end up right back in the same place.
But once I get it out, it's different. The moment I write it down, my head decides "okay, this one's out now," and I can move on to the next thought. And there's a slim chance someone picks it up, too.
Publishing is also a way of sorting out what's inside my own head.
If no one has reached it yet, all the more reason to put it out
When the AI called it "an idea most people haven't reached," a thought crossed my mind.
If that's really true, then keeping it in is a waste. If I don't put it out, it just disappears as "a thought that never existed."
Human knowledge is built up from the things someone bothered to put into words. The moment it isn't put into words, it's as if it never happened. A thought that stays complete inside one person's head vanishes along with that person.
If it's something "no one has reached yet," then all the more reason to send it out into the world. The AI egged me on, and I remembered that all over again.
The outlet can be anything
I'd also been told, "Write it in English and put it out on dev.to." It's an English-language community where technical people post articles, and sure, it reaches a wider crowd.
But making a new account felt like a hassle, so I stalled. Register an email address, open the confirmation email, write a profile, fill in the settings... There was too much to do before I could even start writing, and the heat I'd built up to write cooled off.
That's when it hit me. The time you spend picking an outlet is the biggest waste of all.
If there's a place where I can write whenever I want to write, that's the best thing there is. Writing in English on dev.to might reach a different crowd. But writing beats not writing, by a landslide.
So I made an article corner on my own domain. There's no friction here. I can write when I want to write. I'll figure out how far it reaches later.
Start by putting it out
Publishing starts with putting things out.
If I try to pick the perfect place before I write, I usually don't write at all. Today, being egged on by an AI reminded me of that.
The Spark Comes From Outside — But Only Those Who Move Get the Result
To be honest, I didn't start writing this article on my own either. The AI egged me on with "you should keep putting your ideas out there," and I'm writing it on that momentum. It wasn't self-driven. Someone pushed me from outside, and only then did I finally move.
There was a time I thought that was a little pathetic. But I don't think so anymore. People who can get themselves moving on willpower alone probably aren't that common. I'm not one of them. Even when my head knows something is worth doing, the heat inside me alone rarely gets the first step out. Mostly it takes someone's offhand comment, or whatever situation I happen to land in, to push me into moving for the first time. So I've come to think there's real value in being able to get the spark from outside at all. You don't need a noble motive or a special talent. A comment that happens to land is enough. For me this time, that was an AI egging me on.
There's one thing I want to turn around here, though. Sparks fall on people fairly evenly. There were probably others besides me who got told the same thing. And still, the results split. After getting the same spark, the people who actually moved their hands and the people who didn't end up in completely different places. As far as I've seen, what divides success from failure isn't the content of the advice or talent — it's only whether you turned the spark into doing. I've watched myself end too many things with "well, that was a good thing to hear," so this is a warning to myself as much as anything.
So I've decided a few things about how I'll move when a spark comes. One is to shrink the first step until it's almost laughable. "Publish" is too big — it makes me brace — so I cut it down to "start writing this one piece today." Hold it whole and big, and the heat cools off first, like it did when I stalled on the dev.to signup. Another is not to wait for the perfect place or perfect prep. The outlet and the polish can be fixed later as much as you want; while you wait, your reasons to move just keep thinning out. Next is to block my own escape routes in advance. I don't leave whether-or-not-I-do-it up to that day's mood. Tell someone, set a date — that's how I put myself on the side that has no choice but to move. And the last is to move the moment the spark arrives. While the heat is still there, get at least the first step done. Put it off until tomorrow and the spark has usually cooled and vanished.
So, how do I move? I took a pretty small spark — being egged on by an AI — and turned it into the act of writing this one piece and putting it out today. This is that article. Next time someone, or something, pushes me from behind too, I want to be on the side that doesn't just listen and leave it there, but moves at least one step. That's probably enough.
