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If you struggle to execute on your own plans, you should start smaller

Most peoples failures result from a lack of personal trust with themselves.

They’ve broken their promise to themselves so often that they don’t believe themselves anymore.

Start small. Do the thing you say you’re gonna do. Repeat

posted to Icon for group Self Development
Self Development
on February 17, 2022
  1. 4

    Start small. Do the thing you say you’re gonna do.

    In the tech/business world there are bits of advice I slot under the category of "common sense uncommonly practiced," and start small is probably number one on that list.

    I feel like there are two ways people get this advice wrong:

    The first is that many people don't even follow it.

    I assume the reason is pride: starting small is often humbling, or even embarrassing. I've literally watched one founder make fun of another founder for "smallifying" a unit of work down into a more manageable chunk.

    The second way people get the advice wrong is, ironically, by following it too literally.

    That is, they do a good job of starting small, but then they don't "graduate" with incrementally more ambitious goals.

    For example, I know someone who read James Clear's Atomic Habits and started doing one pushup per day after having gone for years without exercising. A year later? They were still doing just one pushup per day.

    There's nothing terribly wrong with this. One pushup is better than nothing. But two pushups are better than one. And three are better than two. And so on. Likewise other business and project goals.

    Business is a long-term game, and we all have to go at our own pace, but there's so much to be said about capitalizing on the tailwinds of progress and stepping your game up when opportunity knocks.

    1. 2

      Funny, my current side project took major influence from Atomic Habits and that's also what I've observed.

      For the second point, it seems like people didn't read the end of the book.

      You should steadily increase the difficulty (can be a duration, number of times, or another metric) as the automacy build-up, constantly staying in the flow zone.

      This means taking actions that are not too hard, but most important here: not too boring.

    2. 2

      For example, I know someone who read James Clear's Atomic Habits and started doing one pushup per day after having gone for years without exercising. A year later? They were still doing just one pushup per day.

      This is actually sort of funny :)

    3. 2

      "Business is a long-term game, and we all have to go at our own pace, but there's so much to be said about capitalizing on the tailwinds of progress and stepping your game up when opportunity knocks."

      Really well said. Substitute 'Life' for 'Business' --> still true.

  2. 2

    I can definitely relate to this. I find it hard to start small when I’ve set myself big goals.

  3. 1

    Anybody with the last name Runyon is smarter that 70% of other people, so you should definitely listen to this guy. :)

  4. 1

    I feel "start smaller" is much easier said than done. Intrinsically we all know we should start smaller because it's what we hear everyone tell us. But once we begin what is "small enough"?

    Is it a cold email to 10 potential customers to gauge interest in a nonexistant product?

    Is it a landing page briefly explaining a product "coming soon" and collecting email addresses?

    Is it a spreadsheet of cit data for travellers looking for great places to go with costs and other details?

    Is it a forum and blog with founder stories that is distributed each week on Hacker News and through a newsletter?

    Each of the above is small enough in and of itself and each of the above is an example of a project that went on to be huge and successful. But how did each founder decide that they'd started small enough?

    "Small" is a relative term and what is "small" to one founder might be colossal to another.

    Plus we all have an idea that our thing will start off "small", but while we are building it many of us consciously or unconsciously begin to build something bigger, typically unintentional because the small thing is either unusable or we perceive it to be such.

    I know I'm guilty of making "small" things which either are too useless or become bloated just to get to a useful state. I know the answer to this is either 1. I am not focused on my MVP, or 2. Stop adding features and just ship, but again when is "small" too small and when is it just the right size to launch?

    I think this is the dilemma we all face and why so many of us toil away too long on a "small" project that has gotten unwieldy even when we intrinsically know we should have just built something "small".

  5. 1

    I totally agree, especially if you are a bootstrapper is crucial to start small and focus in what you can control. A few months ago I interviewed Derrick, he was a bass player for a long time but then started editing podcasts as a side gig. He was able to build his agency one client at the time and now he employees many freelancers.

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