So I sucked at keeping An Idea A Day going. I mostly got distracted by other things, and also I think have a good select of ideas that can keep me busy for a while. Maybe it’s best to have a short-list of good ideas, than hundreds that I’ll never find time for. At the moment I’m mostly working on my freelance management site at the moment, and a few bits of client work.

I’m reading ReWork at the moment, which is a business book that seems really agile (in the methodology sense). It’s really smart, and says things that I know will upset a lot of people. Saying things like “planning is guessing” flies in the face of everything I learnt when I was studying business. In fact, that entire course was about making product proposals based on project figures, which people like David Heinemeier Hansson (whose really become a hero of mine over the last few weeks) would say are completely useless.

The 37signals guys do genuinely seem to believe that everyone can achieve what they have though. I agree with them most of the time. But they talk about there being a million to one chance of the next start-up being a Google, or a Facebook, and they don’t really realise that they’re a Google, they’re a Facebook. They’re certainly making enough money to be up in those ranks. They talk about having freedom like anyone can have it, but it’s easy to trust your employees with a credit card for expenses or possibly piss of a customer when you’re already earning millions of dollars a month. You don’t have those liberties as a new business who should be cherishing their customers, not telling them that they’re idiots. (Saying that, I love the “Let your customers outgrow you” essay.)

Reading the book has mostly gotten me excited about being the little guy, again. It talks about all the silver linings, like being able to entirely change my business model in one day, and being able to make mistakes whilst there aren’t millions of customers watching me. Being small means I’m restricted to keeping things simple, which is a key stepping stone to a good application, apparently.

I’m also reading a book on Marx, just to get the views that are opposing mine.

The first thing I’ve realised is that people are really susceptible to opinions. Reading this book I’m coming across ideas that really make me rethink my ideas (even if they don’t change my opinions). It throws out simple phrases like “property is theft”. It barely explains what it means, so you’re left to think about it yourself. If it had been explained, I would have read that paragraph and carried on, but I had to stop and think “what do they mean by this?” It’s a pretty strong way to win someone over, once you have them thinking their own ideas up.

“Property is theft” has really struck a chord with me though. What gives you the right to own the land that your home is on? What gives oil companies the right to take the Earth’s resources and sell them as their own? It’s not fair that the richest man takes the most. An arbitrary currency does not entitle anyone to a finite resource which belongs to me by birth right as much as it does you.

I still strongly believe in my argument against that ideology – you’re entitled to what you earn – but it’s interesting nonetheless to think about these things.