Screw it, let’s do it!
Some famous words, from a famous man. It’s his mark to success (Richard Branson if you didn’t already know), and for a lot of people that don’t heed this advice, it spells their doom, or at the least, it secures the chains of mediocracy.
How many times have you been sitting/standing/lying somewhere and all of a sudden, you have this brilliant idea. Maybe it was something that would enhance your business, or your life… maybe it was something completely new. If you haven’t experienced this before… no need for you to carry on reading. If you have, please continue.
When this moment strikes, I think I’m correct in assuming that it struck at the most inopportune moment and you either promised to remember it or decided straight away to shelve the idea. Perhaps the idea required more than you were willing to invest (either in time, money or effort).
Well, what I’ve learnt in the last 10 years on the web is that if you don’t at least try it, you’ll never know if it could have succeeded and you’ll always have that niggling question in the back of your mind “could it have worked?”. I’ve decided to retain focus on what we do, but to some degree, act on impulse and take the plunge on things I’ve otherwise been hesitant to try.
What I admittedly often do is over-analyse things and sometimes those plans never become more than diagrams on paper, mindmaps on my computer and design mockups in my projects folder. My wife has criticised me over this, and she is right… I need to dive in and say “screw it, let’s do it” and thats what I’m now committing to doing.
To my clients, I’d say you can also benefit from this, and the advice in general. Not every angle needs to be covered before making a start on something and I’ve learnt that the web is an evolutionary medium where if you don’t act soon, the moment will pass and when you’re actually ready, there is something newer, better and all (or some of) your plans will be rendered null and void.
My primary school motto rings true:
From small beginnings, better fortune follows
18/06/2009 at 6:15 pm Permalink
cool Ross – I actually have the book – ha ha. But really though, cool. I couldn’t agree more. I feel exactly the same at the moment. Just stuck in a ruck doing boring work – the only way to maintain some kind of passion is take on challenges.
19/06/2009 at 9:49 am Permalink
I have the “condensed” version of the book, was a fun and rather inspiring read.
I have to agree that like you I tend to over think and analyze things. My project folder is littered with scribbles and notes of crazy ideas. I’ve written hundreds of specs for applications and designed silly games that might be fun, I’m normally the one with the ideas in the room but I never get down and implement them, normally because I find some kind of fault with it like not enough people will buy/use/visit it, and then 2 years later a website pops up doing exactly what I scribbled on a piece of paper and now making millions.
Some of the best things in my life were because I acted impulsively and didn’t think.
19/06/2009 at 11:56 am Permalink
“screw it, let’s do it” I couldn’t agree more.
I’m also quite analytical, and very planning orientated. It must be that whole thing of not wanting to redo something, that I always want to get it right the first time.
I have also come to believe that the web specifically is a place where, we should rather try it and look like fools, and at least maybe increase our page rank or have an additional listing in a Search Results Page, rather than sit back and do nothing.
the beauty of working with ever evolving web technology is that we are the authors of our own success stories and we can reinvent them at any time and as many times as we like.
24/06/2009 at 4:01 pm Permalink
I also wholeheartedly agree. I’ve read one of Richard Branson’s books, not sure if its this one or not, and what struck me about him is that he isn’t successful because he started his business ventures to make money but he started them because he wanted to have fun and money was just a result of that
I used to be very impulsive when I got new ideas and would pursue them without thinking them through and then they wouldn’t work the first time round and I’d lose interest in them but now I have some ideas but over-analysing them is making me nervous to try them even though they aren’t high risk ventures so I’m going to just do it too!
07/07/2009 at 10:06 pm Permalink
If you’re going to take advice, you may as well listen to those that have done it and made a success of it, in this case Sir Richard Branson.
The truth is that often things do get over analysed, causing analysis paralysis; and this unfortunately is where a lot of great ideas go to die.
I find that penning everything down in my moleskine helps, I can avoid losing good ideas (‘cos I’ve written them down), expand existing ones & generally connect the dots until I have something that’s good to go.