Have you ever seen your exact idea showing up some place else? I recently saw this commercial, I forget who it was for, but the guy was sitting there wondering about trans fat and whether or not it really exists, or if it was just some marketing thing companies made up to say they have none of it. I not only had this exact idea years ago (the trans fat, not the death crystals) but would often joke about it amongst my friends.
Here’s the commercial:
Of course this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. In fact it happens quite often. And I know it happens to lots of other people as well. I had a friend who wrote a pretty kick ass screenplay and started shopping it around. He told me at one place he went they showed him 5 or 6 other scripts that were essentially the exact story he had written.
So, my question is: Are there truly unique ideas? Or is it just that some people act on them and others don’t? It seems to me that the odds are against someone having the same random ideas as me, however I see them too often coming back at me for it to just be coincidence. I like to joke that there’s a satellite trained on me to hear my great ideas and then use them for marketing or inventions.
I’m sure there’s some mathematical genius out there who could come up with some crazy formula to figure out the odds of 2 people having the same thought, but I’m definitely not that person.
I guess what I should really take out of this is that I need to start acting on my ideas and not just sit on them. Sounds like pretty good advice 