I think that’s wishful thinking.

As humans, we can be guilty of sitting around, waiting for the next big idea to hit us. We reactively reflect, think about things, expose ourselves to relevant material and hope to have some sort of epiphany that will make us the next Alexander Graham Bell. But it’s just another excuse for not producing. Is waiting for something to be revealed to us just divine laziness?

Think about some of the biggest inventions in history. The telephone. The lightbulb. The computer. The inventors of all these things worked their butts off over a period of time to get the results they ended up with. They pitched their ideas. They got rejected time after time. But they made progress, then made improvements on their progress. They got to their finished product in increments- not all in one day.

So, instead of waiting for greatness to strike and our names to go down in the history books in the blink of an eye, we should spend our time improving on the baby steps we’ve already taken…. The path less traveled.

Interesting related reading: Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

We all know he was a polymath who had a strong influence on the basic foundation of the U.S. that is still relevant today- hundreds of years later. But he was cool to me for another reason.

Despite his sometimes obvious shortcomings, Jefferson knew one thing. He knew how to study.

In school, I was a smart kid who had been taught by the system to do the minimum. Studying never occurred to me; I either absorbed info while I was doodling, or throwing things at classmates, or I crammed, cheated, and faked my way to a C. Jefferson had it right though. To pseudo-quote the documentary, Jefferson lived life to its fullest, he had no fear of learning, and no fear that he could not be good at everything.

He woke before sunrise each day and wrote letters to famous scientists, poets, statesman, and architects. Then he read books, sometimes 8 at a time. He was a consummate gardener, author, father, grandfather, vintner, astronomer, and of course politician. He just did not quit.

I’m 34 now. I only wish I had learned early on what it meant to apply myself instead of skate by. There is a sort of nobility to minimizing your effort through school. It demonstrates that you’re too cool to have to work hard. But once you hit the real world, (which I did about a decade ago) doing the minimum is decidedly uncool. I’ve been learning that lesson yearly, monthly, daily. Sometimes to the minute.

You can do more. Are you the best at your profession? Why not? Do you want to be? What are you doing to get there?

Oh. I’m sorry, that episode of Futurama kept you from reading about HTML5 last night. And last weekend when you had a near 60 hours to brush up on your early swiss design grids, it just didn’t seem to get done because you needed a nap and to catch up on your Netflix Q. Aw. Too bad.

Jefferson himself would not have told you to sacrifice family time, or the love of those dear. He was a devoted lover of life and those around him. He was a gentle and engaged father, grandfather and husband. But he just did not F* around with anything that was not enriching his own life, or that of humanity. He wasn’t perfect; he failed often at politics, fidelity, and even contradicted the very tenets he laid down. But he worked hard regardless of his successes and failures. He tried desperately hard to be good at everything. Like… everything. He was better at more professions than most people who practiced an individual trade all their life. Jack of all trades- master of all trades.

So you have no time. Kids, family, a chest cold, hobbies, whatever. Have you ever totaled up what 30 minutes a day adds up to over the course of your average life expectancy? For most of us that’s almost two years. How much do you think you can learn in two years? Now what if you found the five hours a day that Jefferson found each day (7 days a week) usually before anyone else in his house was awake- to read, think, and study…

Let’s put it this way. At the age of 83, Jefferson didn’t count being president of the United States among his three biggest achievements.

My husband snorts at me every time we’re in the car and I turn my purse inside out looking for my notebook. I’m usually in a panic to jot down the idea I just had- but that’s me; if I don’t get it down in a hurry, who knows if I’ll remember it later. (I quite possibly have memory issues…)

My ideas aren’t always directly tied to work- in fact, most of the time, they’re not. (I’m one of those who has to really step away from the monitor a few hours a day.) But if I try, I can steer them in that direction eventually. Last night, for example, I thought of a way to load our bikes in my truck for our upcoming trip to Colorado. It was perfect: didn’t require a rack, and still left room for all our luggage. But the thought came to me so quickly (mid-stride of my run, actually) and I was afraid it would leave just as fast. Like that damn roadrunner. One second he’s there, and the next second all you have is a trail of dust. Beep Beep. So I hopped off the treadmill and zoomed right on over to (you guessed it) my purse, which held my notebook. Took less than a minute. Back to my run, which was blissfully thoughtless.

So then later, as I was going through my notes, I came across my bike idea. I secretly marveled at how efficient it was. The way I was going to pack my truck left the most important items near either the front or the back- easily accessible, within arms reach. The voices (or words, rather, since the conversation happened online) of my co-workers rang in my head. We have a new feature to add to Jumpchart soon, but fitting it on the interface wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. We didn’t want to just stuff this new feature anywhere. It was like packing my truck- it had to be accessible. Someone had mentioned a dropdown menu for this new thing, and as I realized I had found the most efficient way of packing, so had we found the most efficient way of adding this new feature.

While my “idea” wasn’t exactly a work revelation, or earth shattering by any means, it landed my opinion firmly on the dropdown as a solid option. Now I had something to add to the conversation.

When you think about it in terms of “when ideas hit,” nine to five is just a formality. We’re working all the time- whether we know it or not. Even as we’re going about living our personal lives, we’re scooping up experience, having conversations, meeting people, packing for trips, and learning new things that just might be relevant to something at work. The key is finding a cool way to put it all together.

I totally disagree. I’m not saying inspiration is the only way to get anything done, but it can be the boost you need to do it really, really well. In my opinion, it’s the rare combination of work ethic and inspiration that leads to really great results.