Tag: stealing ideas

Originality is undetected plagiarism

Posted on by philipdodson

This is a famous quote by William Ralph Inge.

We are all influenced by others, every single person and everything that has ever been created has come from a person who is the sum, the cocktail of the influences she has had in her life.

That cocktail is the uniqueness, what we choose to put in the mixer and what comes out is our own take on the people who are our heroes.

Yet we seem all to be searching for that magic gem of something original. There is nothing to be gained from that search, it is far better to be spending our time ‘stealing’ from others. Not in a way where we make an exact copy, but where we take the influences of many and blend it into something that is uniquely ours.

Our own individual journeys through life are ours and totally unique, no one’s life will match anyone else’s. The influences we choose to bring in will be uniquely ours.

So, in fact, it is not stealing, it is flattering all our influencers by taking their work and adding our spin. That is where the originality comes from.

It is important though to give them a mention, for two reasons. One it is totally shitty to claim others work as your own, well copying is stealing, adapting is what we all do, blending, remixing, repurposing. Second, it helps people who see your work to know who influences you, as they may share the same heroes.

This blog was partly influenced by reading the great book ‘Steal Like An Artist’ by Austin Kleon.

Bastard, you stole my idea

Posted on by philipdodson

Several times in life I have said ‘bastard, you stole my idea’, OK I’m lying…I used MUCH worse words than ‘bastard’.

Now, I have realised that not many ideas are unique anymore, in fact, it is almost impossible to have an idea that someone else has not.

Ideas are cheaper than ever. When I was born there were about 3.5 billion people, and wow did they have a shit load of ideas every single day, now there is 7 billion plus, it is off the fucking charts. Ideas come along all the time.

Ideas mainly end up in the graveyard with the person who didn’t act upon them. Now, we can not act on all our ideas, that would be exhausting.

However, before the auto-sabotaging machine kicks in, that is inside all of our heads stopping us from doing pretty much everything other than easy instantly gratifying things, we could choose to do some of the ideas that really resonate with us. Even just one or two would be a step forward and I am not talking about ‘I’ve got an idea, I can rearrange all my self-help books in alphabetical order’. Wow, great idea Philip, that will save me time in finding yet another book to read.’I’…great book there ‘Ideas, how to have more’ written by A.Smartarse.

What happened to me, until I realised it was my fault, is I would talk endlessly about doing something, I would over-think, almost eventually convincing myself that I was actually making my idea happen and doing something about it, really just hot air expulsion. Then when someone, who was no smarter or creative than me, actually built the thing I was fucking thinking about, I would go into a ‘shit storm’ meltdown and become a victim.

After many occurrences of this familiar pattern, the scarring led me to actually learn. Ideas don’t matter, just getting on with them is what counts.

The other thing is because something has caused you to be frightened of something, it will not go away by not doing it out of fear. It will only go away by overcoming that fear and doing it.

A few people have taken things that I talked to them about and were my ideas and have gone and done them without me. Are they shitbags? No. I just need to realise that my ideas may not be unique, but I am, and how I execute and make those ideas a reality and evolve them to become even better is what counts.

Setting better boundaries counts too, but at the end of the day getting on and taking the small steps each day to turn your idea into something and then making even better each day is a real safety feature to avoid others doing your thing.

So Philip, stop thinking, get on.