At the eleventh hour – just in time – in the dying, last-gasp seconds…
Find a way to ship.
Starting is the hard part
I’ve been making a mini Lego-alike model from Wisehawk:
It’s tiny, fiddly fun. The instructions are clear, and it’s not rocket science… apart from at the beginning.
At the beginning you’re using the simplest pieces in the simplest patterns – like this:
It’s should be easy, but it’s actually pretty hard to put them together. You’re starting from scratch so there’s nothing to hang the pieces on, and they tend to scatter as you try to attach the next layer. Progress is slow because you don’t have a sense of how the bricks fit together – the pattern hasn’t emerged yet. I had to keep squinting at the instructions as I reordered the bricks, trying to remember what went where.
As the model takes shape, though, everything starts to make sense. Building gets more fun when you start to see what you’re building and you go faster as you get an intuitive sense of how the model fits together. The last bits – the bits that really make it look good – are the easiest of all.
Brick by brick
It’s the same with bringing ideas into the world: we start with pieces that sort-of go together, but we don’t really know how. The pieces scatter easily and don’t add up to much.
But as we find parts that go together, we eliminate possibilities and begin to get a sense of how the larger whole might look. We gain momentum, things start to seem obvious, and it comes together faster. The finishing touches – the parts that most people see – come together relatively easily.
Starting is the hard part.
Vision. Positioning. Execution. (4)
Execution
Being able to execute means being able to get the right things done at the right times. Good execution is a combination of:
- Knowledge – do you know what to do and how to do it? This is a type of vision, but I include here for completeness.
- Skill – are you able to do it? Skills need to be learned and practiced, and intuition improves with experience.
- Will – are you committed? Do you make things happen and get stuff done? Skill doesn’t matter if you don’t take action.
- Performance – how well do you do your part? Do you make the most of what you’ve got?
- Bringing people with you – who else is involved? Are they ready?
- Luck – do things go your way?
The Key
Having a strong will – strong enough that you consistently act on it – is the most important of these. Unless you’re committed and determined and actually show up, make things happen and get stuff done – nothing else matters.
Contact
Next time you read an article, listen to a podcast, watch a program that you like – why don’t you get in touch with whoever made it?
Not just the person who was in it – the ones we normally notice – but the people who made it too. Drop them an email, or even that hand written note that you always think about but never get around to.
Why did you like it? Is there something you had a (generous, non-snarky) question about, or something (of genuine potential interest to them) that you can share?
Try it – make it a light touch. It feels funny at first but gets ever-easier. They’re a person like you, and they’ll probably reply, which will probably be fun.*
*You have permission to stop after twenty unreplied-to contact attempts.**
** To different people.
Getting things done
Thought for the day:
There will always be more good ideas than capacity to execute.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey & Jim Huling – The 4 Disciplines of Execution (amazon)
Conclusion: focus on one or two wildly important goals at a time, and get them done.
This is a lesson that I learn, apply, forget and re-learn in different areas of my life. It works.
You snooze you lose
… is a fact of life.
- It means if you’re not alert, you’ll miss out.
- It doesn’t mean that it’s okay to snatch something out of someone’s hand just because they’re not looking, or that we shouldn’t set something aside for someone who’s running late.
- It means that if you’re not in the game, you can’t score.
- It doesn’t mean that we all have to play the same game, or keep score in the same way (or at all), or that other people’s score should be important to you.
You snooze, you lose…
Except, of course, when a nap’s just what you need.
Old year’s resolutions
- What can you tick off already? Good work on those.
- What do you need to quit – stop doing, stop trying to do, draw a line under, declare an amnesty for yourself, admit that it won’t get done, and let die with the old year?
- Perhaps most crucially, what are the little things – acts of kindness that you’ve been thinking it might be nice to do, short emails to friends, decisions, bookings, commitments – that you can do, and get into the habit of doing, starting from right now? Today, the day before you make new year’s resolutions, everything you do is a bonus, a gift of the momentum that a frontlog brings that will make tomorrow better or easier for your future self – the self who’s arriving tomorrow.
Compound interest
We all know about compound interest in the world of money. Save £100 a month for thirty years at one percent interest** and you’ll have a little under £42,000 by the end of that time (compared to £36,000 at zero-percent).
Make that investment at 5% and suddenly you’ll hit £83,000.
10%*** makes almost £228,000.
It takes time, and the commitment to building something steadily. No tricks, no promises of outrageous returns, a degree of risk – but not when compared to not investing at all.
What if the interest we seek for our work – attention, respect, partnership, remuneration – could compound in the same way? Often it seems that we’re after a flash in the pan (Viral. Now.), or that we’re not building anything consistently at all.
Starting with almost nothing, drop by drip, brick by brick, little by little, we can build a mountain.
** 1% annually, calculated monthly
*** A reasonable return from a stocks-and-shares index fund
The new possible
My sister (let’s call her Sharky) bought me a book for Christmas.
Sharky lives in Argentina.
She bought the book from a shop in the UK.
I’m on holiday in a remote part of Indonesia.
She bought the book, told me about it, and I was reading it, in less than ten minutes.
This is the new reality – actually, not even that new anymore. Any information product (book, film, music, software, design) can go anywhere, in effectively no time.
The new possible consists of the things that this reality enables – not just instant access to information products, but information to go into products (3d printing designs, specifications) or for the delivery of products and services (your exact requirements or preferences, your real-time location, your purchase history, your credit rating).
What becomes possible in your field when the information is so relevant and so available, when the transaction becomes so fast, so frictionless?
AirBnB, and Uber are cannonical examples of the new possible, to which I’d add the fact that this year, Sharky bought me a Christmas present.
In their hands
Make something people can use.
Put it in their hands.
See what happens.
If they’re eager to pay – attention, time, money – you’re onto something.
Watch them. Listen to them. Tweak it. Make more of it. See what they think.
If they tell their friends – and if their friends tell their friends – then you’ve got it.
What change do you seek in the world? Who are the people you seek to serve?
You’ve got it when they’ve got it.
You’ll know you’ve got it when you meet someone for the first time, and the thing you made is already in their hands.