Just Start
June 13th, 2012
Starting is scary – we’re afraid to get it wrong. And we let our fear block us from starting. And that’s strange, because there’s never certainty on the right way because every situation is different. Fact is, you will be wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong. But even the level of wrongness is not important. What’s important is starting because starting gives us the opportunity to respond to our wrongness. And that’s the trick – our response to being wrong is progress. Start, be wrong, refocus, and go. Progress.
The biggest impediment to finishing is starting. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. Just start.
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Mike Shipulski
Very well put Mike! I keep those words in front of me every day…”Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.” A lean master friend of my uses that phrase. But the fear of what you can’t see or don’t know (yet) can really get in the way of being successful. And if the first attempt will be some level of failure, and like you said: there will be, use it as education. Not as a reason to stop. Thank you for this post.
Design is continuous process I explain it as helix going from soft to hard and taking a step upwards at each turn. The problem is not fear, the problem is that too many times the neither assignment nor selection criteria are clear. This leads to a lot of unnecessary corrections many times on the flight since time becomes limited.
I think that the MOST important step at start is to inform yourself as good as possible on the possible problems related to the specification. The investigated field has to be broader than the one in the spec since many devices / systems are after availability used under extended “conditions”.
Of course the designer must try to find the optimal solution for the application domain not the perfect but the one which is economical as well from the manufacturer as from the user’s point of view. It is difficult since those are many times contradictory.