Did you know that 200 ideas are typically needed before you can get to a place of originality with your idea?
WOW. That's a lot of ideas.
How do we even get to 200 ideas?
Iteration...it's absolutely key in the building and scaling of your business.
A brilliant theory, The Helsinki Bus Station Theory, emphasizes the importance of this. All of the buses leaving the Helsinki Bus Station leave the city the same way, stopping at the same three bus stops. It is logical after sitting on the bus for over an hour and still being within city limits to want to hop off the bus, race back to the bus station and find another bus that will get you where you need to go faster. But upon trying out another bus, you find yourself at the same place you were before an hour into your ride. It is only when you wait it out, and stay on the bus, that you get beyond those same three stops and start to see new things.
James Clear (www.jamesclear.com) highlights the connection between this theory and the importance of revision:
“It is the revision that matters most.
They are so busy jumping from line to line in the hopes of finding a route nobody has ridden before that they don’t invest the time to re-work their old ideas. And this, as The Helsinki Bus Station Theory makes clear, is the key to producing something unique and wonderful.
By staying on the bus, you give yourself time to re-work and revise until you produce something unique, inspiring, and great. It’s only by staying on board that mastery reveals itself. Show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way and every now and then genius will reveal itself.”