Where are you going? How are you going to get there? Thinking big is crucial to your success, because you can’t afford to lose sight of your goals. At the same time, so is moving your business forward day in and day out. Is it possible to do both well? Yes — but only if you settle for 80%. Doing so is what has enabled me to be successful; to license dozens of ideas, to start and grow profitable businesses, to publish books.
My advice? Stop overthinking it. There’s only so much planning you can do. Developing a road map is essential, of course. Study up. Plot. But really, forward momentum matters even more. You will never have all the answers. That’s okay. All around me, I notice others getting caught up. They can’t seem to move their projects forward. They’re mulling things over, making assumptions. They keep working on the same idea for years and years. Perfect doesn’t exist, I want to them. Wouldn’t you rather get things done? It was Seth Godin who really hit this concept home for me. He put it in simple terms: You need to ship. You’ll make changes later on. That’s fine. But you need to be able to ship.
I took his advice to heart. So if a project is 80% completed, if I’m 80% satisfied, I’m good. In my book, that’s okay. It’s time to move on. Sometimes we’re too close to our projects to see what we’ve accomplished. Take a breather, get a second opinion.
If you asked my employees, they’d tell you I move too quickly for their taste. They’d rather I slow down. Am I as thorough as I could be? No I’m not. I admit that. It’s a fault. One I’m willing to live with, at the end of the day. Because what matters to me the most is that I keep moving forward — that I don’t succumb to inertia.
If you let yourself, of course the thought of taking on that new project will overwhelm you. If you think about it too much, of course you won’t want to step outside your comfort zone. If you hum and haw, of course those things you don’t want to do will fall to the bottom of your to-do list.
Don’t get trapped. Don’t linger. What does that look like in practice to me? Settling for 80%. If you do, I guarantee you’ll accomplish more. Cultivate a sense of urgency by setting concrete action steps as well as deadlines.
You need both to get where you want to be.
Please, look to the future — but don’t let it interfere with what you need to get done today. Jot down a to-list day in and day out if need be. I do.
Your work won’t be perfect.
It doesn’t have to be.
Originally published on Inc.com March 18th 2016.
