On Being Prolific.
I think the enemy of done is perfect. This may be a cliche, but it’s one of those that happens to be true!
I personally find it very easy to get stuck in planning, instead of action. Most plans do not survive contact with reality (“Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face”) and yet “fail to plan, plan to fail” rings true.
How can this be possible? Surely these are two conflicting ideas?
Turns out, not quite.
Because the point of planning is not to get all the details right. It turns out that working right is less important than working on the right thing.
You can work incredibly hard on the wrong thing, and you’ll get nowhere. Conversely, you can do a relatively mediocre job on the right thing, and you may still be rewarded.
So the direction of our efforts is just as important as the momentum of our efforts. This is why planning is important, it allows us to set the right direction. The details, well we will only truly figure them out along the way. And there can be no other way, especially if you’re doing something innovative.
I mean, that is — quite literally — the definition of innovation. Doing something that has not been done, so why should we expect to have a clear pathway and action item list? We should expect to have a degree of confusion, to not always have clarity on the next steps.
And so being prolific requires us to take constant action, regardless of the self-doubt that we experience along the way. You have to wake up in the morning and just get things done, and trust that you are directionally correct.
After that, you just need to compound all the small daily efforts into something meaningful.
