09 January 2017 Shipping Faster

Your lizard brain slows ideas.

It’s nearly a decade old, but as relevant as ever: Always. Be. Shipping.

I’m very slow at shipping ideas. From big side projects to short blog posts (like this one). They often float around in head for weeks, then longer as notes on my phone. Only much later do they turn into something. Sometimes.

Seth Godin says it’s our lizard brain. It slows down ideas and kills them through inertia. I also find it stops new bulbs from lighting up – there’s only so many ideas I can keep in my head at once. If I don’t get them out fast enough new ones don’t come.

But it’s never been easier to quickly get from light bulb moment to shipped product. It takes almost no time or effort or cost to gauge demand or build a prototype. Technology let’s you make things (or break things) fast. Or bash out a hundred words.

There’s probably something to be said for letting ideas sit to evolve. They “stew”. But I find it doesn’t happen without action – researching, brainstorming, writing. Especially when Mario Run doesn’t let you get bored enough to stew them over. (That’s why you have your best ideas in the shower.)

I love pushing things out into the world. Even pressing the Publish button on a post. Not just because people engage with your idea, but shipping one creates space for the next to exist.

If you don’t, your current small ideas (or bad ones) might be blocking that next big one.

I’m not very good at it. 73% of my blog posts last year were published in the last week of the month. I don’t have a schedule or volume target – I post whenever I have something worth sharing. Yet my lizard brain apparently likes an artificial monthly deadline. Rarely do I post more frequently, unintentionally holding out on a post idea to ‘tick’ off that month. And while my brain is holding ideas, it’s not generating new ones.

I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions, but this year I want to move faster with ideas. Get them out into the world sooner (and not just one at the end of each month). Starting with this post, based on a conversation I had with a colleague only three days ago. Normally it would take me a fortnight.

And I’ve got another post to write tomorrow.

Freeing up the mind keeps it hungry.