I have this weird thing I do sometimes. I don’t know if anybody else does this, but I’d like to imagine so. I will start thinking about some project or hobby I want to work on, or just an idea for a thing I want to make, and I will spend time planning it out in my head. I’ll map out some way to achieve this idea. I’ll structure the steps to take to achieve it. I’ll think about the best way to work on each step—the possible mistakes I could make, all the different parts I should focus on. And, perhaps most dangerously, I’ll think about the success I might achieve when I finish it. All the people that might like it, or money I might make, or how I’ll impress myself for committing to something so difficult. If it’s a particularly grand idea I might stage a fake interview in my head.

“So what’s it like to have worked on this amazing thing?”

“Well, it was simple, really.”

I will spend so much time thinking about something I want to do that I will get burnt out before even doing it. I’ll get so much pleasure from imagining success in my head that I won’t work on the thing that might achieve it. After all, I’ve already gotten everything I need from my own imagination.

Now this is obviously dangerous. It’s a bad habit of mine. And luckily I’ve been fortunate enough to have actually worked on things that have gotten me actual success. But it’s easy to imagine a world where these ideas stayed right there—in my head—imagined. The worst part, I think, of all these projects I haven’t worked on, isn’t so much the projects not being made; I’m not so egotistical to think that the world is a worse place for me not committing to my ideas. But I might very well be worse off. Because the reason we commit to ideas isn’t just to make them a reality; it’s to experience making them. To learn a skill or develop a hobby or work on something that’s just plain hard, but got a little easier by you trying to do it. A lot of these imagined ideas of mine are new skill related, after all. The fake interview questions in my head are all about what it was like to grow and get better. The end product was just a justification for the meaning of the experience.

So it’s very strange to me that the world is largely moving towards fixing the lack of finished ideas, but not the lack of experience. That so many companies are advertising a button you can press that will make the idea for you; something to work on the project in your stead. Because, if at any point you presented me with such a button—even if it were truly magical and could accomplish the idea flawlessly to the best of my imagination—I don’t think I’d be any better off than if I had just imagined the whole thing to begin with. At least, I can’t see the difference.