TLDR:
- If you’re in search of a 5-second idea with a long-lasting impact, you’re probably one random conversation with your best friend away from it. You’ll know it when the sparks in your mind instantly begin to go haywire, and the lightbulb.
Changing lives with interactions the person has long forgotten
In the relationships section of last week’s “How I Write” episode with Sahil Bloom, David Perell talks about an interaction with his friend who tells him to “cut shit out of his life.”
Sahil then talks about the irony of an interaction that a person has long forgotten greatly impacting your life for several years, akin to a life-changing interaction, even if it’s just 5 seconds long.
It got me thinking about any well-known instances that come to mind pertaining to very brief interactions having an everlasting impact on a person’s life, not just necessarily the world.
What first comes to mind is Attack on Titan mangaka Hajime Isayama’s inspiration for the Titan concept, a vital component of the anime. Probably no one would have ever guessed it were drunk people of all things.
And that too a drunk customer he saw at a net café.
Odds are that you’ve heard of the anime at least once, for Attack on Titan went on to become one of the best-selling manga of all time, and is a big reason for anime’s continuous skyrocketing popularity in recent years.
So if Attack on Titan was your first introduction to anime and are still hooked to it to this day, you have the drunk net café customer to thank. Isayama-sensei certainly is, while if the guy ever found that having a bit too much to drink one night inspired a cultural phenomenon, he’d be demanding a piece of the pie in the form of royalties.
But of course, that’s not all.
Airbnb started as an idea to let host rent out spaces on their floor during conventions. Now, you can rent out an entire mansion while vacationing somewhere in Italy.
Mark Zuckerberg originally started Facebook exclusively for fellow Harvard students. Though it’s now only synonymous with middle-aged people, at its peak, literally everyone was using it.
As Paul Graham writes in his “How to Get Startup Ideas” essay, none of them were even supposed to be companies initially, growing out of things their founders built because there seemed a gap in the world.
The principle applies to Attack on Titan as well, there is no other Seinen anime like it, filling a gap that wasn’t even there at first. Now, all weeaboos find themselves wondering why there aren’t more shows like it.
It’s not for no reason that the best content comes from real conversations. Hotmail began as a means of communications used by their founders to talk about their previous startup ideas while at their day jobs.
You will hear Perell regularly talk about this as well with his “How I Write” guests. The best ideas most certainly do come when you least expect them, and that too when you’re just casually goofing off with your friends.
So to put it simply, if you’re in search of a 5-second idea with a long-lasting impact, you could easily be one random conversation with your best friend away from it, and you’ll know it when the sparks in your mind instantly begin to go haywire, and the lightbulb