Get things moving to avoid stagnation and demise of a new idea
You’ve dreamt up a new project idea and you’re brainstorming.
How am I going to ensure I succeed?
What am I going to focus on?
Who am I going to collaborate with?
When will I know if I succeeded or not?
Questions and possibilities flow quickly and abundantly through your head. Questioning is a form of strategising. Strategising allows you to get a sense of direction. You want to make sure you don’t miss anything out. You don’t want to do work that isn’t necessary. Strategising is good and useful.
But you can get paralysed!
The death of a new project can happen before it even starts because you don’t get it moving.
Projects are snowballs. Pick a direction with as minimal planning as you can get away with. Then get your snowball rolling.
You can’t steer a ship that isn’t sailing. You can’t steer a car that isn’t driving. You can’t steer a plane that isn’t flying. You can’t steer a rocket ship that hasn’t left the ground.
Forward movement allows you to use built up energy to adjust to new directions that are influenced by new insight. You don’t have to be moving in the perfect direction from the start. Chances are, even with the best planning, you’ll find a better direction on the way anyway.
What you can do today:
- Choose the smallest version of your project that allows you to get to a finished state — a small, but complete product. The smallest version might not be shippable when finished, but would just need enhancement from the finished state to move towards something shippable.
- Start moving towards that smallest version of your project in small, steady steps.
- While moving towards finishing that smallest version of your project, and through the doing, you will answer questions, set better direction, and give your project a chance at building momentum! 🙂
Don’t let your project die of stagnation before it gets off the ground. Give your project a chance by taking small steps forward, which turn to strides and then leaps in continually better directions.