Effort


Ambitions is rarely met with a sufficiency of time. That’s the case with this website and the projects I always have on the go. To paraphrase the Genie from Aladdin: great ambitions, itty-bitty time and space.

It’s also easy to let the TODO list become that of reasons why you don’t launch. Reid Hoffman says, if you’re not embarrassed by your first version you launched too late. While embarrassed isn’t really what I’m striving for, that statement does help to highlight that it’s usually a false choice between shipping all or nothing, with something being the clear winner every time.

Instead I’m choosing to see this for what it really is, an opportunity. What better motivation could there be than the urge to fix the rough edges of the early embarrassing work? What better encouragement is there than the measurement and momentum of progress in units regularly shipped? How better to evaluate and validate work, to determine if it’s become what it sought to be is still becoming? How better to discover the unexpected than to push forward boldly learning from mistakes and successes equally?

Results are rarely indicative of the effort required to achieve them. In adopting a “build in public” approach I hope to share some of that story. But more than that, I hope to share the easy and hard-won learnings gained throughout the years, with the hope that others may save themselves a little time and effort of their own through that of others, as I have so many time along the way.