A number of years ago I had vision of starting a company and I decided to use my PhD to accomplish this task. While starting Blue Lion Labs I am fortunate to be surrounded by a number of advisors that counsel me in my journey. I wanted to share a lesson I recently learned from one of my mentors:

The most important thing, is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing.

I struggle with being a perfectionist and needing everything planned before I execute on anything – and you might be similar. However this is a logical fallacy since I will NEVER know everything and perfection is impossible to achieve! Waiting until I am certain about a given decision will often lead to inaction. This is commonly known as “paralysis by analysis”. To overcome this I found that it helps to ask myself this question: What are the costs and benefits of adopting a strategy of making a decision before I have all the evidence vs. waiting until I have all the evidence? (Note: “all the evidence” seems to sliding scale.)

Inaction often leads to missed opportunities because one keeps on waiting until they have the perfect plan or the conditions are just right before they execute. This is flawed thinking because one’s environment is always changing. If someone takes a long time to make the perfect plan it’s no longer perfect since the landscape of the situation has changed! This often takes shape when someone needs to research every possibility and plan for every contingency. You are lying to yourself and tricking yourself that you are actually getting work done, when really you are overpreparing.

Another good strategy to follow through on this lesson is something called “just in time learning”. With this strategy you list all the tasks you need to get done and then prioritize all the tasks from most important to least important. And then – you only focus on the first item! All the other items are off limits until you move the needle forward on that first priority. In fact, you don’t have the right to work on the second task until the first task is complete. As you work on this task you learn just enough to get the task done and nothing more. Anything but the first task is a problem for future you and you can learn how to accomplish those tasks when you complete your current task. And remember, this is important because as you complete your first priority, the landscape will have changed and your priority list may shift around a bit.

If you need some motivation that encapsulates these ideas, listen to the following music video by Jocko Willink and Akira the Don. If you’ve never heard music like this before, then welcome to meaningwave.

I leave it at that. Thanks for reading.