Life

Get Something Up

For anyone considering a new idea, the best piece of advice I have is this: get something up.

That means you avoid overthinking and overanalyzing and actually build something. Build something even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not totally baked. Hell, even if it’s just completely broken. Just getting something up in the most basic sense will clear that initial hurdle of doubt out of the way and allow your brain to focus on making the thing you created even better.

I’m not sure exactly why it’s so appealing to go back and forth about whether something will work or not. But I know I love to waste lots of time doing it. I also know I am not Elon Musk and my ability to predict the future is limited. So when I get trapped in that mode, it typically means I need to stop theorizing and actually build something so I can see how it works.

Want a popular example? Look at Facebook. Remember the Wall? The Wall was how you used to be able to share stuff. You’d post it to your Wall, or your friend’s Wall. Now, the Wall is completely gone. It morphed into the Feed, and the Feed is what currently makes Facebook so much money because users just keep scrolling through it, viewing ads mixed into their friend’s posts for hours at a time.

The things is, Zuckerberg and company couldn’t have conceived of the Feed without first developing the Wall. The Wall was the thing they could conceive of at the time. But even though they ended up abandoning it, creating the Wall helped them get to the really big idea: the Feed.

Getting something up makes it real. It allows us to look at our ideas from the outside. It allows people to give you feedback because there’s an actual thing for them to look at. And if the feedback is negative, it’s still positive because it allows us to make a good decision about whether to continue with the idea.

This concept is also known as the iterative approach. I think it’s better than overthinking things.

So if there is something you are stalling on right now, maybe you want to think about what you can take out of your brain and put out into the world. Thinking about it will only get you so far. Get something up and go from there.