Let's Write It - Lessons from The Social Network

For whatever the movie, The Social Network, claims about itself, or whatever discussion it has generated about the veracity of its depiction of the beginnings of the website, Facebook, I found the film to be inspiring. Despite the obvious flaws of many of the characters, there are a few lessons I took away from the movie, and I hope these ideas inspire you as well.

In one of the early scenes, Mark is working on a late night coding binge just to occupy his mind with "an idea" after his girlfriend dumped him. The idea turns out to be the uncouth concept of ranking his female classmates based solely on their school photos, but let's leave that aside for now. In the following clip, Mark's roommate comes into his dorm room to supply the missing piece of the puzzle for Mark's new website.

The thing that struck me most when I first saw this scene was how immediately Mark dove into his idea, coding well into the night to create what just hours early was merely "an idea". There was no gestational period for the idea, no time of contemplation or planning or dreaming. He just did it. At the end of this clip, did you notice what Mark said? "Let's write it." That was it. There's the idea. Now, let's do it. (In this case, a gestational period would have been good, considering his "idea" was born of personal rejection and large amounts of beer, but you get the point.)

I've got lots of ideas. Some of them are great, and some of them are mediocre. But all of them are failures if they never see the light of day. What was remarkable about the depiction of Mark in The Social Network is that he attacked ideas without abandon and made dreams a reality. 

Later in the movie, Mark defended himself against claims that he stole the idea for Facebook by telling his accusers, "If you were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook!" As funny as this sounds, the element of truth is this: Unless you make it happen, your idea is worthless. (I'm not an Intellectual Property lawyer, and I realize ideas have value, but that really only reinforces my point. Unless an idea becomes reality, it's value is only theoretical, and any claim or lawsuit would be worthless.)

The other thing to note is this: Mark's night of coding brought an idea into reality, but if the story stopped there, it wouldn't be remarkable. What made the story great was the fact that Mark didn't stop there.

That idea that is sitting there in the back of your head, waiting to be released, is probably not your best idea. It's just the one holding up all the other traffic. Get it out, and get on with what's next, because that's where the success lies.

In many ways, this blog is my idea, limited by execution. And this post? This post is my "Let's write it" cry. I could rewrite it later, but I probably won't. I'll simply crank it out and move on because my best ideas are yet to come. I've just got to get this one out of the way first.

(Disclaimer: While there are many things I enjoyed about the movie, The Social Network, I cannot offer an unqualified recommendation of the film. It is rated PG-13 for a reason. Also, I do not claim that the scenes in the movie are factually correct accounts, only that the events as portrayed in the movie illustrate certain points.)

Comments

[Michael Bauman]

I love it. Seriously. Basically you are saying, take a step out of the boat. Give your full attention to God and what you are doing. And actually obey --- the thoughts will come, the Spirit will lead…. But do not try to sit and figure everything out first. Love it!