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A Thought is Not an Idea

2021-04-09 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:03 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life (also: Projects) · mode: Advice & reviews · tags: self promotion, civic or action cta

Prompted by a fan website counting the days since he last started a new thing, Hank says intentional creation has three stages: thoughts, ideas (thoughts combined into an objective and a path) and implementation, illustrates them with the Awesome Socks Club, and seeks a product lead and co-founder for a new business.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The 'days since Hank Green started a new thing' website: Hank's habit of starting projects, many of them failures or jokes

  • ★★ Hank mentions a website, born of a running joke among some people on Twitter, that counts the days since he last started a new thing; it stands at seven days, since the launch of the Life's Little Lies TikTok. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Days Since Hank Green Last Started a New Thing, Twitter, TikTok
  • ★★ Hank is simultaneously proud and terrified of his habit of starting new things. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ The website lists everything Hank has started, an impressively long list riddled with failure: of 11 listed 2020 projects only four still exist, and three were jokes. — 00:00:29 · Days Since Hank Green Last Started a New Thing

  • ★★★ Asked how he gets ideas, Hank says he can't teach having an idea but can say what one is, which many get wrong; intentional creation has three stages: the thought, the idea and the thing. — 00:00:29

    “the three main stages of intentional creation”

00:00:58 — Thoughts are not ideas: an idea combines thoughts into an objective and a path; the sock subscription as an example

  • ★★★ Thoughts are not ideas: Hank's sample thoughts (raising money for a maternal center in Sierra Leone, socks selling well at DFTBA.com, many good independent artists) are unconnected and point in no direction. — 00:00:58 · Maternal Center of Excellence, Sierra Leone, DFTBA Records
  • ★ Hank keeps a list of thoughts that might go somewhere, which viewers can't see: it is a silly place. (playful) — 00:00:58

  • ★★★ An idea combines thoughts so that you end with an objective to accomplish and a path to get there. — 00:01:27

    “you have an objective you would like to accomplish and a way to get there, some kind of path”

  • ★★ Hank's example idea: a sock subscription sending each month a sock by a different independent artist, with 100% of the profit going to charity. — 00:01:27 · Awesome Socks Club

  • ★★ The third stage is making the idea a thing: the implementation, the work. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ The Awesome Socks Club has now donated over $200,000 to the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone. — 00:01:27 · Awesome Socks Club, Maternal Center of Excellence, Sierra Leone

00:01:56 — Implementation: the Awesome Socks Club's donations, the people involved, and how the idea changes in the doing

  • ★★ Keeping the club alive takes many people; Hank happened to know a woman in the sock business in Missoula, Montana, without whom they might not have managed it. (hedged) — 00:01:56 · Missoula, Montana
  • ★★ In implementation the idea changes: the artists were to be the main marketing, but since most socks were to be surprises, the club turned to TikTok people Hank had met. — 00:01:56 · TikTok

00:02:26 — New ideas spin off; Hank seeks a product lead and co-founder for a new business; sign-off

  • ★★ As often happens with businesses, the working club started to spin off new ideas. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ For the first time, Hank is looking for a product lead and co-founder for a new business he wants to start; the application is in the description. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Hank asks viewers to tell people they think are cool and interesting, and might want to work on something exceptionally weird, about the job. — 00:02:55

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank used to tell would-be YouTubers or TikTokers he didn't know how, since it's different now; true but not useful, so he now asks for their objective and what might help them get there. — video description
  • ★★ Thoughts, ideas and implementation all depend on time, money, relationships, skills and knowledge; each year in business Hank has more of all of them except time. — video description
  • ★★ This makes Hank think about how older people have hoarded all kinds of capital, not just financial, and he does not want to be that person. — video description · economic inequality

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Awesome Socks Club · Days Since Hank Green Last Started a New Thing

Also: DFTBA Records · Life's Little Lies · Maternal Center of Excellence · Missoula, Montana · Pelifans · Sierra Leone · TikTok · Twitter

Only in the description or credits: economic inequality · Simon Vin

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