What Creative People Should Remember: Ideas Do Not Arrive in Chronological Order
Last night, just before going to bed, I suddenly felt anxious.
Sometimes, in moments of quiet solitude, countless ideas appear in flashes. They make it difficult to focus on any single task. I begin to wonder how I could ever accomplish them all when youth is limited and time seems so short. Whenever that happens, I simply close my laptop, go to bed, and tell myself I'll think about it again tomorrow.
People with abundant ideas must learn how to prioritize.
Ideas do not arrive in the order they are meant to be executed, nor are they necessarily things that need to be acted upon immediately.
Sometimes, while I'm still at point A, I receive an idea that I won't truly understand until I reach point D. At other times, while standing at point E, experiences I had back at point B suddenly come together like pieces of a puzzle, revealing a meaning I couldn't see before.
In my own life, I have moved from A to F through many different experiences. Occasionally, long before an experience actually happens, I have an intuitive sense that I will one day go through it. It's as if I already know the destination, but not the route, the timing, or the steps required to get there. Then, when I finally arrive, I realize, "So this is how it was meant to unfold."
For example, four years ago I came across the term International Relations. I didn't really know what it meant, but I had a strange feeling that one day I would become deeply interested in studying it. Ironically, at the time I had absolutely no interest in politics or diplomacy.
There were moments when I wondered if perhaps I simply lacked discipline—that I was someone who could only think but never act. I even forced myself to read books about politics. Yet everything felt unnatural. I wasn't enjoying it, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was trying too hard.
Eventually, I let the idea go and simply focused on living my life and doing what was in front of me. Strangely enough, only recently has that old intuition begun to make sense.
Four years ago, although I was somehow drawn toward the outward-looking field of International Relations, I was actually fascinated by deeply personal and inward experiences. Then I unexpectedly moved abroad and became a hotel butler. I left behind everything familiar, discovered Jungian analytical psychology, and spent years exploring my inner world.
Now, perhaps as a natural counterbalance to those years of looking inward, I find myself wanting to turn outward again—to understand society from a broader perspective. And without forcing it, that desire naturally overlaps with International Relations.
Moving from E to F is often as simple as stepping up one stair.
Trying to leap directly from A to F, however, feels almost impossible.
When an idea comes, write it down—and then let it go.
If you cling to every scattered idea that appears, you'll lose the ability to walk through the necessary stages between A and F. Instead, treat each idea as a quiet blessing—a gentle hint about the direction you're heading.
Then return to reality.
Ask yourself what you can do today. Break it down into the smallest possible actions, and focus on those.
One day, you'll look back and realize that the ideas that once existed only in your notebook have quietly become part of your life.