Month: May 2020

Deadlines slip. Weeks are lost. In the moment, it feels like you’re losing. But even then, you can always squeeze out a success.

In an ideal world, every week you ship successfully. Shipping regularly keeps you well-calibrated. You’re less likely to fool yourself. It also feels great: you made a plan and executed successfully.

Reality doesn’t always go as planned, of course. Things come up. Before you know it, Friday rolls around and you’re not quite finished. What do you do? Often, you can’t cut the scope.

My favorite alternative: share a promising update.

You’ve made progress during the week, share what you’ve done! A snippet of code, a screenshot of a feature, or a few lines of copy.

Share it with yourself. Share it with your team. Share it publicly. Celebrate what you’ve done, even if it wasn’t everything you had in mind.

A single type of mistake has personally cost me millions of dollars in my career: failing to constrain scope. Specifically, letting a deliverable drag on for months without simplifying it.

Having a vision is both a strength and a curse. You have a clear picture of the destination. You have the motivation to push forward. But it makes it easy to hallucinate where you currently are today. You can toil for months on a project without any progress, but think you’re doing great. The vision in your head is overriding reality.

The solution is to ship deliverables on a regular basis ⏤ ideally weekly. If a week goes by and you haven’t shipped, cut scope and try again. At a minimum, ship an update. This is especially important when you’ve got a big vision → the bigger the vision, the stronger the potential hallucination.

I have a complicated relationship with junk food, especially chocolate chip cookies 🍪. I love the idea of them. I love the initial taste. But, more often than not, I regret eating them.

When I’m presented with many options — when I need to make a choice — I get similar vibes. The idea of having a choice is exciting. It empowers me. I feel in control. The reality, however, is often paralysis. I may feel anxious, tired, or indifferent. I wish someone would just choose for me.

Iyengar and Lepper (2000) did an experiment at a grocery store. Two tasting booths were set up — one with extended varieties of jam, and one with a limited set. More people stopped at the extensive choice booth. But a significantly smaller percentage actually made a purchase there. Limited choice more reliably converted to the desired action — making a purchase.

The USA is the richest country in the world. Why can’t we buy our way out of this mess? Why can’t we buy the essentials that other countries have plenty of?

Our shelves aren’t just empty of toilet paper. We also lack life-saving equipment for medical personnel. This isn’t a global problem. Many countries, far poorer than the USA, have both TP and PPE.

Why do we not have these things? It’s simple: we refuse to pay the price. We have an allergy to market prices.

This isn’t a metaphorical claim. Paying a price higher than expected — $5 for a mask that used to cost $0.50 — is painful. It breeds resentment. It creates outcries for government intervention.

Rather than having access to essentials at higher prices, we choose to go without. At least it feels fair. Alas, this isn’t the capitalism I signed up for.