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Be very, very aware of perfectionism. As it creeps into your work, it stops your productivity. In fact, perfectionism stops you from even getting started.
Here’s an example.
I first thought of Sustainability Entrepreneur on January 27th, whilst laying in bed. The very next day, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I needed to create a landing page and start gathering the evidence. The evidence would show that
there are people out there, who want to launch a sustainable enterprise but they don't get the time because life gets in the way.
This is the problem that I knew I could fix BUT I need evidence.
It took me 30 minutes to specify and commission that landing page. It took another 30 minutes to suggest to the designer what it should look like. All I needed was to present the idea and then collect emails to build up a bank of interested parties. All good, right?
But then, doubts started creeping in.
I knew I could launch this service with just a landing page and use that to start gaining evidence that this solution was needed.
But I then assumed the visitors might need more credibility before handing their email address over.
So I thought, how about a blog? So that when people hit the landing page, they’ve got some more content to read through. It would also serve to legitimise the site.
So, then I commissioned a blog, and I started thinking up ideas for content. This was taking up a lot of time and energy, so I had the idea to make a video that would explain things better. That video delayed this service a lot, and it was expensive.
I didn’t follow my own advice.
I should have really posted the landing page and started to collect evidence, but I started to busy myself trying to read the minds of people who might land on this website. I was trying to second guess them, and I got worried, so I let my doubts play on, which fuelled my perfectionism.
The landing page tells people how we can help and asks for their email address in exchange. It could have been that simple, and I could have started collecting evidence ages ago, (Back in Jan/Feb) and that evidence would have allowed me to make more intelligent assessments of how to build the supporting blog.
What I’m trying to say is…
You don’t need all the bells and whistles to validate an idea, all you need is a tool to generate evidence (or validation) in the quickest simplest way. In many ways, I’m glad that I went through this learning curve because it’s taught me something very valuable for my future endeavours. It taught me that perfectionism is the enemy of productivity.
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