Ship it Already!
Or are you wrestling with a chrome squirrel?
Are you comfortable with producing work that has no end? Are you comfortable not finishing a job and letting it continue until the end of time? You need to have a bias for action! You need to accept the work as it stands, stop fussing with that thing you are doing, realize that it is good enough to ship.
Go! Ship it.
Constraints are our friends. Constraints help us find solutions when we were not looking. Forcing a time constraint, even if it is artificial, will urge us to produce work on time and allow us to deliver.
What are you waiting for? Ship it already!
Too often we let things distract us from what is most important. A shiny squirrel sitting over in the corner begging for your attention, chittering away. Screeching for your attention. It has called you with that siren song…
I’m a problem
over here
you want to come to me
fix me instead.
Come to me, my Champion
come to me, my Warrior
come fix me
come solve my problem for me.
No. Stop! You need to have discipline. You need to finish the work that is in front of you and ship it! Quit screwing around, quit fussing about, quit picking at nits on the sweater and do the work that you need to do to complete the activity so you can move on to the next one! Ship it!
Discipline
The manufacturing world has a philosophy called one-piece flow. It is a lean manufacturing concept that allows and forces you to produce something and ship it. The discipline to complete one piece at a time. You may say, no, it is more efficient to work in batches. Yes and no. It depends on the item and the amount of work required, however, in the long run, one-piece flow kills batch processing. The concept behind it leads to shipping it. Create one thing, work that one thing, finish that one thing and ship it. Do it again. Wash, rinse and repeat.
Take the literal description of how this concept works, but the idea is to work through your actions, complete them, and deliver a finished product BEFORE you move on to the next thing. Do not try to multitask because multitasking is a fallacy. Make sure you do the hard work first and stop chasing after chrome squirrels. The most basic concept of this is that it is better to ship something, even if the quantity is not the same as requested, versus shipping nothing with a large amount of work in process, but nothing complete.
In order for you to deliver early and often is to recognize what level of quality as well as quantity before you are comfortable to ship. Please make the effort to not be perfect with your solution because perfect tends to be subjective, and may not add the value that you are expecting (imagining?) that comes with the shiny perfect solution you provide. You need to identify and understand what is good. What is acceptable? What is acceptable and can be shipped quickly? Depending on the type of product you are delivering, you may be able to ship a less-than-perfect solution to let it have a life. You may change someone’s life with an imperfect solution because you shipped it!
Use constraints to your advantage when it comes to shipping. Set those minimum constraints, those checkpoints that can help scope your working envelope and enable you to understand the value of what you are trying to ship. Is it the right number of words? Is it the right number of pieces? Is the paint dry? Is the date you selected realistic? Constraints that you apply will help with urgency. Force discipline. Use that motivation to initiate the proper amount of urgency and the right amount of attention in order for you to be successful. Ship it!
Go forth and be brilliant.
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