The Difference Between “Opinions” and “Ideas”

The world turns on the power of ideas, and yet the social media world seems very often to revolve around shallow opinions. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and others encourage a 24/7 barrage of opinions on every subject imaginable.

In my book “Jolt” I reveal that the average employee spends up to 40% of his or her day dealing with email, and 70% of workers experience great stress when their email systems go down. (With 10% of that group physically assaulting their computers.)

Email, social media, blogs, and other tools allow us to weigh in on everything from politics to sports to art – whether or not we’re actually qualified to report on the issue at hand.

Sure – much of these are just innocent comments exchanged between friends, but the question is – how much of your life is spent spewing opinions versus developing or thinking about great ideas?

Do you spend most of your time online discussing the latest conspiracy, Kardashian sister, political or office trivia, or thinking about issues that really matter? Certainly gossip has always been a staple in our culture. It didn’t take social media to reveal that.

But a simple reading of local newspapers, watching TV, or checking popular magazines show that while there’s an abundance of chatter, there may be a famine of great ideas in our culture today.

The bottom line?

Stop living under the tyranny of cliches. Fight the distractions that the digital world is built on. Take advantage of the progress mobile devices, computers, the Internet, and other digital inventions have brought us. But don’t forget to carve out time without those distractions.

The kind of time it takes to birth the serious ideas people will remember…

Dive into more encouraging articles by Phil Cooke, What Does Success Look Like?

For more than 30 years, Phil Cooke has helped nonprofits find their purpose and is now applying this experience to individuals: “During a long career in the media business I’ve talked to hundreds of writers, producers, directors, designers, executives, and other professionals and discovered that in most cases, one thing is all it takes to launch a project or dream.”

Learn more about the writer Phil Cooke