98, 99, 100 and more

I kind of want an amazing idea for 100 but I don't have any really amazing ideas in mind and I want to move forward from brainstorming to choosing and performing. So here are 98, 99, and 100.

1. Sawdust. I guess the fuel market is pretty crazy right now. I learned from Gerald Baca that there is a lumber mill/saw mill that is generating a huge supply of sawdust and doesn't know what to do with it. If we could make it into a clean fuel . . . or even sell it for gardens and pets. I really love the idea of waste products becoming useful. (Thanks Gerald!)
2. Treat your concrete. There are a ton of new homes here. The builders recommend that the buyers treat their concrete but most of them don't take the time to do it. I bet we could go around to new developments and offer to treat their concrete and get a lot of jobs.
3. Rocks. Similarly, all the developments here in the west side of Albuquerque xeroscape with rocks. I bet home owners would pay a reasonable fee to keep all the rocks picked up.
4. Working day care. How about a day care where the kids work instead of sit and play. I think that child labor laws might be an issue here. But the point would be education for the kids. Perhaps the work is done as service rather than as a way to make money. How about that? How about a sort of day care for older kids where all they do is learn to serve. They could help Habitat for Humanity build houses. They could winterize homes for the elderly. They could offer free car repair to certain groups and improve parks and pick up litter.
5. Sports day care. Maybe not as noble but pretty fun to run. I think this is self explanatory except that you choose the most fun sport you think you could safely facilitate.
6. Private Airplanes. They are so expensive. But they can't be as expensive to make as they are to buy. I know there is some sort of regulatory barrier to entry going on here. It would be interesting to learn what it is and crack it. Now making private planes makes for a pretty cool company!
7. Kid's picture collages. The parents save the kids artwork in a box and then pay you a small fee to digitalize it and put it all in a convenient format on a cd or dvd. You get to save them all and chuck them all at the same time!
8. VCR-->DVD. You could transfer everybody's collections over for them.

90-97

1. Paper watch. It would be interesting to have a service that watched for all the academic papers that come out related to a key topic.
2. How about a system of questions and answers. I need to know how to make a 97% efficient hologram. So I pay you to teach me.
3. Research for hire. OK, so this is an old idea. But it's still interesting! Say you want to know if AireBorne really works. You hire someone to test it out.
4. High School. This can't happen on an hour a day. But I think it would be fun to gather a bunch of sharpest and funnest people that I know and put together a school that would blow the socks off of any that exist. And we would do it out in the boonies like a farm/monastery.
5. Sensors. Turning a real world signal into a voltage signal is just really cool. I would love to have a company that perfects and makes sensors of all kinds. At first we wouldn't have any new technology. We would just creatively use and market existing technologies.
6. Commercial Real Estate. Only the goal isn't just to make money. It is to change the way cities work. I don't see any good way of curbing urban sprawl other than either curbing population growth or changing lifestyles. It would be neat to develop housing concepts that simultaneously enable higher density living conditions and higher quality of life. How about the ground floor is Walmart, the roof is a park, and accross the street is the University? This may require some capital outlay . . .
7. Origami for hire. Because Origami is cool. We could pick some really cool folds, achieve excellence in them, and use them for wedding decorations and high class parties.
8. Optical component library. Half of our time in the lab is spent looking for components. Another 10% is spent ordering new components that we should have somewhere. If there was a solid library system it could save many dollars and a lot of money. It would be worth paying someone to develop and maintain a real system . . .

Getting Life in order.

Sunday is a day to rest and reflect. So no 8 ideas today.

So on February 7th I laid out a road map that I am trying to follow:

1. Get life in order and generate 100 practical ideas (right now I only have 3!).
2. Choose one idea and devote 1 hour a day to making it a reality.
3. Gradually increase the time I devote to it as it begins to pay for our lifestyle and my tuition.
4. Graduate and either go full-time or sell it to begin the next project somewhere else.

As of Tuesday evening I will have completed my list of 100 ideas. It has required a fair amount of work coming up with this list but I think that the time hasn't been wasted. I think that I have been forced to adopt a certain way of thinking that might be worth practicing. And it has helped me better understand the incredible magnitude of the array of options that are open to us. It has also allowed me to test my ability to give a little time and a fair amount of thought to this endeavor on a daily basis in something of a gradual and nonthreatening way. So far there are several ideas that would be worth pursuing and at least two that need to happen like a child needs to be born. Since I can't handle twins I will need to sell one of the concepts to a good parent. And I have some possible parents in mind.

But this post is meant to be a reflection on the first part of requirement number 1, which is getting my life in order. Daily investments are going well. Exercise, planning, sleep, scripture study, time with the kids and helping around the house, time to talk and laugh with Gina, deep study time for physics, time to work on my current research project (Quantum lithography. Right now it can beat the diffraction limit N photons at a time where N is up to 4 or 5. I need to see if the process can be sped up by a factor of about 10^18 without losing the improved resolution and visibility.), journal writing, work with the young men's program, etc. Really there are 3 things that I need to build into my way of life more and more solidly:

• Planning by installation. Many projects take overseeing over an extended period of time. That requires regular attention. However, attention is my most scarce resource. I need to continue to develop a system that will allow me to give the required regular attention but keep my mind free to work on other things in the interim. Let me say that better. When I was about 5 my father promised on a Wednesday evening that he would buy an Atari for us to use if I would remind him on the weekend. That evening as I went to sleep I said to myself over and over again "Remember to tell Dad to buy the Atari. Remember to tell Dad to buy the Atari. Remember to tell Dad to buy the Atari . . ." I continued saying that to myself over and over until the weekend came and I was ready to remind him. When I went to see him on Friday I knew what to say. I said it but he had already bought the machine. I can't afford to use that method to keep track of my tasks and obligations because there are too many now. And the time scale is one of months rather than days. I need to become very adept at planning to invest in an event or in a goal by installation. Take plants. Maybe one needs to be checked and watered weekly. I need to be able to check and water the plant weekly and not think very much about the plant for the rest of the week.
• Execution. I can plan to water that plant once a week. I also need to water it. Execution has to be simultaneously tough and flexible. Tough so that when I plan I can trust myself to perform the required action at the required time, and flexible so that if something truly important comes up (someone needs a blessing, one of the kids is really struggling, Gina is sick in bed, a friend is in need) I can reprioritize and act immediately.
• Delegation: this is a crucial skill that I really need to develop. Here is a neat little list that my wife showed me from a book called "If you want it done right you don't have to do it yourself."

1. Prepare beforehand.
2. Clearly define the task to be completed. Be specific. Ask the person to whom you are delegating to repeat the information back to you to ensure that he or she fully understands.
3. Clearly outline the time frame within which the delegated task must be completed.
4. Define the level of authority he or she is to use with this task: authority to recommend, authority to inform and initiate, or authority to act.
5. Identify checkpoints when you will meet with the delegatee to review progress and offer guidance if needed. Schedule these meetings frequently at first, taper off as you see the task being mastered.
6. Hold a debriefing session to discuss what went well, what could have been improved, and what has been learned.

Finally there is one principle that is going to be crucial: grace. "It is likewise through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means." (LDS Bible dictionary under Grace) I believe that I am out to do good. I believe that as I exercise faith and repent I can receive strength and assistance to do that good. I believe that I will be helped by God and by man and will only succeed with that help. I believe that I will receive that help in abundance and will therefor succeed.

82-89

1. Babysitting for Gyms. I know this is already done. All over the place. But not everywhere. And where it isn't done there is frustration. And so it was suggested that I figure out a way to make this service more ubiquitous. (Thanks Brad Bushman!)
2. Electrical Safety. Talking with an electrician I noticed a pattern in the times when he or others were "hit." Basically the pattern was that the electricians would take precautions and turn off hot wires and breakers and then someone at a distance would flip the switch while they were working on something else. So the idea here is to figure out a simple way to make sure that electricians have local control over the heat of a given wire. (Thanks to Eric Estep, electrician for interview.)
3. Dissertation Archives. Dissertations are ostensibly not only a summary of work on a certain topic but a source of important original research. Currently, however, they are largely hidden to the world because they sit in campus libraries, mostly unavailable. I think that everyone would benefit from having the dissertations made available to the world to search through and read as needed. This has to be done whether by me or someone else. (Thanks to Darrin Law for the conversation that sparked this thought.)
4. NEPA and other laws can make actions for the benefit of the forest difficult to perform. Part of that is just paperwork! TurboTax has streamlined paperwork for everyone who pays taxes. But there are a lot of other activities, particularly activities that have to do with the federal government, for which the paperwork could be steamlined in a similar manner. (Thanks to Chad Horman for the information leading to this thought.)
5. Bill analysis. It would be really nice to have congressional bills immediately digested, sorted, and indexed so that everyone could know what congress is working on. (And the information would also be hugely useful after the bills were passed.) I think congress itself and others in the area would be the first to want the information.
6. Accelerated math. Most people don't want to homeschool. But many want their child to excel in at least a couple of areas. I believe that there is a gigantic waste of mathematical potential in our public schools. It would be pretty neat to have a private track for math or other subjects that would mesh with public school. The kid goes to school but leaves a period early for math. They get the benefits of normal school, but actually gain the math skills that will let them thrive in the science and engineering world.
7. Language Preschool. So if kids are most able to learn a language as preschoolers are we missing out by not teaching them a language at that time? Gina has a whole curriculum for the purpose of teaching such a preschool that was prepared by Dr. McKee at BYU. (Thanks Gina!)
8. Computer diagnostics for cars. So you get the lights going off on your dashboard but you have to take the car in to a mechanic to interpret them. Wouldn't it be nice if one gas station just had the computer diagnostics on sight and charged an extra 5 bucks for you to use it?

74-81

1. Reward list. Most money for research gets won by people who propose to look into something. That is OK. But for me there is something neater about the prizes offered to people who have already performed. There are lots of prizes and bounties out there but it can be difficult to find one for you. (If I could win any that I know about I think it would be the P=NP? prize.) I think it would be neat to collect all such prizes in some ordered format and make them available to everyone.
2. Bounty site. This is pretty similar but instead of going out to search for prizes that already exist you provide a listing service to invite bounties to be offered. (I'll pay $10 for every pound of scrap metal. $50 for each joke that can make my boss laugh out loud. Ten percent of the pick for every cherry tree that you pluck clean.)
3. Reverse E-bay How about a place where you describe the job you want done and take bids. The best value-bidder wins. It's not as simple as Ebay because there can be a lot more than price that might go into the value equation. Unless you can make the product requested very specific.
4. T-shirt logo contest. Get entries focused on a theme from high school art classes all over the place. Best entries get made, marketed, and sold and the submitters get a share. (Thanks Gina!) (I like this as a promotion for another business as well.)
5. Dust. Optical and nano labs work better if they are super clean. There are now several vacuum systems and other systems that clean about 99% of the dust out of the air. Put a few in series and you could get very high purity in the output air. The attractive thing here is the price differential between products intended for households that are sold in the store and products intended for the lab.
6. Patent rehash. So you have a concept and you want to see if it's been done before. You go to the US patent office. And you research. And research some more. And then a little bit more. At the end you think that maybe you have something new. But all this time you have been searching around rather than being productive. Either that or you have forked it over for an expert to do the work for you. There has to be a better interface to this vital information. The patent office doesn't have a huge incentive to provide it. The lawers benefit from a bad interface because it makes their job more difficult and specialized. The rest of us could use a better system. I think many would pay a reasonable fee for a better system. Especially if it had a google alert feature notifying the user of all patents that pass that are related to particular areas. Also, reading patents can be a vital way to come up with new and better ideas of your own. A nice system for finding relevant patents would speed research.
7. Pig slop. Stores need something to do with their produce as it goes bad. I think they trash it which is a waste. Why not gather it from all the stores and restaurants and feed it to pigs and chickens?
8. Yard drive. In Provo they have a program where once or twice a year the city collects yard trash. Branches, leaves, grass, etc. Then they compost it. They sell the compost and actually make a profit for the city. We need that in Albuquerque.

66-73

1. Energy patrol. You go around to homes to check for all the simplest things that are wasting energy. And you fix them. Two hundred dollars per visit and an average savings of $100 per year in energy costs.
2. Landscaping. A lot of people buy homes and repair them and sell them. One part of the home that is usually not changed to much is the landscaping. But for some of the higher end homes I think that a good landscaping job can make a huge difference in the value. It's a big part of the difference between a home and a manor . . .
3. Garden Design. A given home has areas that are shaded by different amounts, that are exposed to different water conditions, etc. If you determine what plants thrive under what conditions in your city then once you have a map of the home and the trees etc. you could come up with a design for a garden that could thrive. A little planning might go a long way.
4. Solar Patch. You could sell a little patch that interacts with UV light. That patch could be worn by people outside. When their UV exposure gets to a certain point they know it is time for a change. Or if they are sunbathers they know its time to roll over.
5. Educational Supplies by Subscription. Instead of having every home with devoted parents becoming full of educational supplies (like arrays of counting beads, letters, texts, etc.) you could pool many parents together and they could check out items as they are needed. (Thanks Gina!)
6. Applesauce. Gina makes killer applesauce. We could make quintuple and sell it. Then more.
7. Magnets. There is really no cooler toy than a magnet (or, better, a collection of them) for adults or kids. These things need to be promoted and given to every kid and most adults in a lot of forms. Why aren't there way more magnets in homes? Why aren't there cool magnetic toys on most of the desks in most of the offices in the US?
8. Scrap book makers. Give us your messed up piles of photos and documents and we'll make cool family books out of them. (Thanks Gina!)

58-65

1. Book binding company. I've noticed that pretty much every book that I have purchased off of Amazon has been poorly bound. It would be nice to work with existing publishers to offer a version of existing text books that is bound better than the current ones. Basicly you center the whole business around the book as a physical entity and make a better one than we have.
2. Book rebinding. Or you could take books already made and remake them in stronger form.
3. Kid's books. Similarly, it would be nice to have books for kids that are virtually indestructible. Maybe if the pages were made of the same cloth that some clothing tags are made of . . .
4. Healthy food for hospitals. I don't know if I want to do it but it needs to be done. People look to hospitals as an example of how they should eat.
5. Dried fruit and nuts vending machine. I'd like it. But then, I never use vending machines. Is there a dichotomy between long term and short term thinkers that means that this won't work? Well, brainstorm now, edit later.
6. Paint recycling. You collect the paint, and let people buy it. They can mix their own colors. (Thanks Gina!)
7. Pencil Vending machines all over campus. Now this I could see using. If the price weren't insane. In fact I would love to have these. Notebook vending machines too. (Thanks to Denis V. Seletskiy)
8. Physics Curriculum for gradschoolers. It's funny because the physics curriculum is one of the most traditional and well established curricula out there. And the body of knowledge is systematic, well contained, and beautiful. The subjects are deeply intertwined. And yet the curriculum needs a lot of work. The learning track is not nearly as systematic or iterative as it could be and learning all the fundamental concepts can be like a treasure hunt. A lot of work could be done here.

50-57

1. How about a company dedicated to gathering the most beautiful photos?
2. It would be pretty fun to help people begin herb gardens.
3. Could lead tours to cool places. Like the Great Barrier Reef, or, more locally, some of our New Mexico caves.
4. How about beginning a semiannual Albuquerque chef cook off? The participants and winners get publicity. The paying audience become the judges.
5. Mobile oil change unit. (you call them, and they come and change your oil for 10 bucks extra.) (Thanks Gina J. Bradshaw!)
6. Taxi by appointment for the elderly and others. You work it out so the taxi is running all day. (I couldn't do the driving but I might be able to arrange a regular schedule.)
7. Troubled children monitored by retired parole officers. (Paid by parents or by state.) (Thanks Gina!)
8. How about some kind of annual recycling technology convention? Prizes for the most practical and promising technologies.

42-49

1. Make a better graduate level optics text. We really need one. There just isn't anything that cuts it right now.
2. Equipment rental. I don't know whether you would just rent access to a great wood shop or rent the tools but there are a lot of tools that almost nobody would use every day but a lot of people would use on occasion. It would deffinitely help people who want to repair their cars or do fancy things for their homes.
3. Garage. People who want to repair their own cars are always wanting to find some place to repair them. And their neighbors often want them to find a different place. How about providing a great place to come and repair your car and combining it with an onsight auto parts store?
   
4. Computer purchasor. It might be nice to be able to say to someone "Here is 1000 dollars. Take 10% of it. Use the rest to get me the best computer you can." They would ask you what you do and what you care about and then make the purchase. And they would give you back the change.
5. Sack lunches. We save a lot of money because I generally eat food that Gina made rather than restaraunt food. And often I get better food. What if we scaled it up a bit and sold lunches right here on campus?
6. Shipping I don't know if this counts because it isn't a full fledged idea. But 3 things: off-shore manufacturing keeps going up, and purchases over the internet keeps going up. At the same time fuel prices have been rising. These are three megatrends that make the shipping industry dynamic, important, and possibly open to some real changes.
7. Aldi How about a franchise of one of the neatest grocery store out there?
8. Private Community Center From the southwest side of Albuquerque you have to travel like crazy to get to a place for a kid to play soccer, learn gymnastics, learn dance or karate, or anything like that. You have to travel like crazy to get to a gym. This would be a winner. May take more capital than I want to dig up though.
   

34-41

1. Medical education for parents: how do you recognize an ear infection? If the parent knew right away it would save unnecessary medical bills on the one hand and trauma on the other hand. Video for the most common things that parents take kids in for that they don't need to take them in for. "Here are 4 common rashes that we don't do anything about but that parents take their kids in for all the time. Here is what to do." (Thanks Gina Jones Bradshaw).
2. How about video cameras that are a little cooler. Like how about if the camera is somehow mounted on your glasses and the memory and power are in your back pack?
3. Noninvasive realtime measurement of blood sugar levels. You can actually monitor the impact of your diet and activities.
4. Design and build equipment for windsurfing.
5. Teach windsurfing.
6. Bagel Toaster: People burn their hands pulling bagles out of toasters. What if you built a toaster that made it easy to get your bagel out? (Thanks Collin Trail.)
7. How about a less invasive measure of blood pressure? (Some people get a rise in blood pressure when they know it's being taken. You could get better results if you avoided this problem.)
   
8. Writing and publishing company combined. You commission writing to meet a need.

26-33

1. Export Albuquerque specialties. Green chili and pottery.
2. Car repair by subscription. Ideally this would reverse any perverse incentives to over-repair a car. Or damage it. If the mechanic is receiving a fixed fee to keep everything in shape then the only incentive is to do effective preventative maintenance.
3. Research sales, make shopping lists and menues. You could save a lot of women a lot of work. (Thanks Gina Jones Bradshaw)
4. Reconcile EOBs with medical bills. You could specialize on a few policies and take a percentage of the dollars recovered. I think from what I have seen personally that this would be a bonafide service. (Thanks Gina Jones Bradshaw)
5. Weekly summer activity list: daily games, book list, educational activities, family field trip suggestions. Could include bulk acquisition of certain types of passes like zoo passes etc. (Thanks Gina Jones Bradshaw)
6. Real time jogging speed measure and reporting system.
7. Real time swimming speed measurement and reporting system using underwater speakers or headphones. As a swimmer I know this could help. You really don't know too well how fast you are going so much as how hard you are trying. Maybe you could do little things that would improve your speed without taking extra effort. But it's hard to know without a little feedback.
8. Medical lab. Those things can be way too slow. And that not only lead to unnecessary anxiety and worry but can also be dangerous. It would be neat to begin a medical lab whose positioning was that it got good results back to doctor and patient in the fastest turn around time possible. Really focusing on turnaround time like a fast food restaraunt.

18 through 25

I want to get moving so it's time to really brainstorm. I'll try for 8 per day.

1. Street vendor. How about selling crepes from the street like they do in France? Or hot dogs? Say $2.5 a pop with lots of Nutella. (Thanks Bart, J-dawgs, and all those frenchies.)
2. Musician feedback: you could give real-time feedback on pitch and or rythm. The violinist or trombonist could learn to get the pitch spot on and refine the ear. I like this because it is so physics oriented and game oriented at the same time. It would almost seem to be a waste to practice scales without it.
3. Musician DDR: DDR is not very different at all from what an excellent music teaching program would be like. If you change the arrows to ordinary musical notes and add a transformer you have a pretty powerful way to learn to play music. And it becomes very game like with learning to site read becoming almost addictive.
4. Nose. This may be a bit beyond me right here right now but it would be very cool to do medical diagnostics using an artificial nose. Like a breathalyzer but with enhanced capabilities. So noninvasive! I read that dogs can use smell to tell if someone has cancer with reasonable accuracy . . .
5. New City Friend You get off the plane in a strange city and after security someone helps you with your carry-on, leads you to your rental car that is ready and waiting, and gets you where you need to go. They know what kind of food you like and what restaraunts would serve it, they have recreation options listed and arrange to have your luggage taken straight to your room without your even seeing it.
6. Tablet Math Every method of entering mathematics onto a computer is a hastle. But it sounds like microsoft has some software that will let you write the math out by hand and will actually be able to interpret it in terms of symbols. That would be pretty cool. Especially if it were then combined with something like Mathematica or Maple or MathCad. It would be like drawing on the chalk board except that the chalk-board could turn around and regraph the equation that you had written more accurately.
7. Fuel Efficiency monitor. How cool would it be to have real-time information on your fuel efficiency? It shouldn't be too hard to keep hooked up to the odometer and the gas tank . . . And people could train themselves to drive efficiently.
8. Pairing rewarders. How about if you have two tags and when they are placed in proximity they give a little reward? When our kids are cleaning up they have the most fun if the bag that holds the legos becomes interactive. If it eats the legos or dings every time a lego enters or anything like that they love it. What if you had some kind of little sticker where something goes and one on the thing and when they get close enough that the item is in its proper place it give off a reward?

15, 16, and 17

1. Market a new device to make canning peaches more convenient. (Suggestion Gina Jones Bradshaw, invention Judy Jones)
2. Grow produce using hydroponics. I think hydroponics and aeroponics are cool. It would be fun to get really good at one crop.
3. Rate performance of doctors and real estate agents (for example using a star system). I don't know where the revenue would come from but we need some kind of formal system to help us choose service providers like these. I also think that if there were an efficient feedback system for medical care then the need for punitive lawsuits would decrease. The punishment would be simply that everybody would know if you were an incompetent or careless doctor and your business would decrease. But feedback isn't just a punitive thing. It is also vital if you want to do the best that you can. And it is fun. People like games, video games and conversations at least largely because of the immediate feedback that they get from them. They train themselves and hone their skills using that feedback. I think we would have better doctors and better real estate agents etc. if we could provide mechanisms for fast accurate feedback.

First 14 ideas

1. Cyberspace real estate for optics. Like Tew's milliondollarhomepage.com but specific to optics and perhaps more ordered for the user's convenience. (Thanks Tew and Denis V Seletskiy.)
2. Consulting. Right now I'm a world-class expert on the spatial modulation of ultrafast lasers. I could pass on that expertise to various companies. Then, as I learn, perhaps I can develop a company specializing in consulting. (Thanks Cathy Webster.)
3. Brokering student consulting. Here at UNM are all kinds of niche-expertises. Why not help graduate students leverage their knowledge for experience and financial support? (Thanks Denis V. Seletskiy)
4. Scientific data archiving. A lot of data is collected and then allowed to go dormant. If there were a system for archiving data that could be easily used and accessed, that would be huge. I think government grants would be very forthcoming in this area.
5. Online Tutoring. Take my current revenue source to a broader audience. (Thanks Bart Bradshaw.)
6. Textbook design . . . how about a practical course in technology for high schools? (Thanks Jake Kolander.)
7. Produce Class in hot topic. For example, arrange an awesome course in PHP for 200 bucks a head. Try to have 100 people take the class.
8. Promote music It would be a lot of fun buying a radio station to run not for proffit in and of itself but rather for proffit as a promoter of music.
9. Western Capital New Mexico What's wrong with 10 k per deal? Also, a local investment firm wants to add commercial real estate to their list of offerings. They have a huge lead base and could feed right in to WCNM (Thanks Dad)
10. Design and sell scientific T-shirts (“I put the stud in study”) (Thanks Guy Kawasaki.)
11. Create efficient market for used scientific equipment. (Thanks Denis V. Selestskiy)
12. Sell the sweetest pocket protectors! They could be used as advertising for companies like the geek squad, and a million engineering and computer science companies. They could go around at science conferences.
13. Sell my invention: the robust femtosecond optical vortex maker.
14. Medical Diagnostics. Try to make better versions of current optical sensors.

100 ideas begin

I figure that ideas are easy to come by and harder to implement. And some ideas are easier to implement than others. So it makes sense to compile quite a few before I get too specific. Hopefully having done this I can be a bit more flexible. Soon enough I will have to choose one or some combination or synthesis. At that time I can begin being critical and weighing the options. Right now I just want that list of 100. Also, I'm no business mastermind so I've been asking others for suggestions. I will try to write down the sources for the suggestions as I put them down.

Before I go let me share a little more of my thinking on ideas: I want to be free with my ideas. First of all, a big part of why I am in all this is to do some good. If someone takes an idea and runs with it or alters it and then runs with an improved version the world becomes a better and more interesting place. So why not share pretty freely? Second, I think that the idea will be less important than the implementation of that idea. So I don't see the world so much as a competitive market for ideas as for ideas that are well implemented. It is easy to transfer an idea. It is harder to transfer an excellent implementation of an idea.

Title change and a new venture

Perhaps the title of this particular blog will continue to change from time to time as it evolves. The title was Better Healthcare Less Cost, which is a goal that I would like to strive for when the time comes. But in the mean time I am removed from that by what has to be accomplished now. Right now I would like to come to a deep understanding of quantum electrodynamics, finish my PhD, keep my family alive and thriving, perform well in my ecclesiastical duties, and start a company that will have me prepared to make a dent in health care when I graduate. Everything in it's season, no?

The new title is Diligence and Temperance. I noticed this odd pairing of virtues when I was reading Alma 38 in the Book of Mormon and it really struck me. How do you grow a tree? Not by working really hard one day and then abandoning it but by making a little effort on a regular basis. How do you get into good physical shape? Not by pounding the gym real hard one day or even all day everyday. Rather you have a consistent and regular plan and you stick with it over time. How do you become an expert in a academic field? The same way. By combining temperance and diligence. How do you start a business? Usually what I hear about is insane hours and insane workloads and insane sacrifice. I believe in sacrifice. But I believe that true sacrifice is giving up what you value for what you more deeply value. So I want to build up a business with in the constraints of my current rich, full life by using the principle of coupled diligence and moderation.

It may be that I hold this odd pair as a talisman as a cover for my weakness. In starting something truly worthwhile my weakness is that I have very little time. OK, in truth I have as much time as anyone else. What I can more accurately say is that I want to start something great but that starting something great isn't my first priority. It comes after my duty to God, after the well-being of my family, after personal health, after my pursuit of truth, even after my current pursuit of a PhD. So if starting something is so far down on the priority list, how do I even have a hope of succeeding? I intend to invoke that amazing pair of powerful concepts, diligence and temperance.

By keeping my priorities in order I need never become burned out. And by consistently pushing ahead I can work toward continual progress toward my most cherished goals. I'm excited to start something. It's hard to stop thinking about it. But somehow I have to start something without giving up those things that I truly want most. I believe that I can. Here is the plan.

My first business plan:
1. Get life in order and generate 100 practical ideas (right now I only have 3!).
2. Choose one idea and devote 1 hour a day to making it a reality.
3. Gradually increase the time I devote to it as it begins to pay for our lifestyle and my tuition.
4. Graduate and either go full-time or sell it to begin the next project somewhere else.

So if you have ideas for me please send them. Remember the constraints: little time, and little capital, and it has to promote the general good. Ideally it could be capable of supporting a growing family on one hour a day.

Bart Bradshaw

Check out this active blog by my brother, Bart. It is clear that he intends to do something of use!

http://26vibrations.blogspot.com