Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a treehouse for my kids.

I actually started building the treehouse a few years ago. I got the platform up in the tree, but then the project just sort of…stalled. The problem was that I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to build on top of the platform, but I knew a regular treehouse was out of the question.

I mean, anyone can build a regular treehouse.

Then one day I was buying birdseed (I’m in my 40s now, so I’ve become a birdwatching guy.) when suddenly an idea popped into my head: What if I built a giant birdhouse?

So with the help of my friend Carson, that’s what I did.

Once the structure was finished, I turned my attention to the interior. Naturally, I decided to decorate the walls with pictures of celebrities who have bird names (Tony Hawk, Sheryl Crow, Dove Cameron, Raven Symone… you get the idea). And I decided to make those pictures out of birdseed.

I started with a portrait of Robin Williams, of course.

I was telling a friend about all of this, and he started laughing. He shook his head and said “Only you, man… Only you would come up with this. And only you would actually do it.”

The older I get, the more I want to do stuff that makes people say “Only you would do this.”

You see, life is short, and time is a nonrenewable resource. Every moment spent on one thing is a moment not spent on something else.
That means that every time you do something anyone could do, you’re choosing not to do the thing only you can do.

You’ve spent your entire life gathering a unique set of inputs, interests, talents, obsessions, and quirks.
No one in the world has the same mix you do!

That inherently means that there are things that only you can bring into the world. Don't you want to see what happens when you do?

Actually, I can tell you exactly what happens.

First, your own life gets better.
You gain experience and confidence. You learn new skills and become proficient in them.
Your work attracts other likeminded individuals, and you build a community of people who like the same sorts of things you do.

But the second thing that happens is even cooler: other people’s lives get better, too.

When other people see you chasing your ideas, they get inspired to chase their own.
But also, the things you put into the world become ideas that other people can build on and be inspired by. And thus, the cycle continues.

If you’re facing a choice right now between something anyone could do or something that makes people say “Only you, man…”, go with the latter.

The world will be better off for it, and so will you.

Happy Friday, friends. Make it a good one.

Kyle Scheele
Helping You Launch Better Ideas, Faster
​www.KyleScheele.com​

P.S. If you're thinking "I would love to be the kind of person who brings my ideas to life, but I don't even know where to start!" I have good news for you. My next book, How Ideas Work, is designed to solve that problem. It breaks the creative process down into a bulletproof framework that teaches you exactly how to gather inspiration, discover breakthrough ideas, evolve them into their most effective forms, and launch them into the world. You can preorder a copy here.