sustain – From the desk of Adam Thomas

Don’t commit too much to new ideas

New ideas are great. It means that there is a project on the horizon, and shipping projects feel good.

The newness of an idea is fun. The hard part, though, is turning that curiosity into something finished. That involves a process.

My old process might sound familiar to you. It included slicing large blocks of time out of my calendar where I was going to do the work. From there, I would sit down, and try to do 5 to 10 hours of work on this one idea.

Sounds good in theory, but it was awful in practice. The amount of time wasn’t an issue. The amount of pre-allocated commitment was. I made a promise that was too hard to keep to myself.

When you run into promises that are too hard to follow, it’s easier not to start on the project then fail to hold your “word.” I didn’t know it at the planning stages, but just by committing that amount of time to that idea in huge chunks: I sowed the seeds of the project’s defeat.

A lot of promising things didn’t ship because I over-committed.

o I recently discovered a process that allows me to take on ideas, and ship them with a higher completion rate. It requires going the other direction, promising less time.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but committing to something small makes starting much easier.

If I plan on working on something for two minutes, well, it’s that much easier to get going.

So, committing to small is an excellent ignition point – what about sustaining that little commitment better and how do I make sure that I don’t work on it forever?

Well, over the next two days, we will talk about just those topics.

For now, think about how you can lower the amount of time commitment to the ideas you have. A smaller commitment means more tasks complete.

We romanticized the “genius myth.”

“Genius myth?”

Here’s the idea: “real genius” is alone in a room. Once inspiration “hits,” the artist works on a problem until completion.

The “genius” doesn’t take the time to think about anything, she just walks in and gets to work.

After completion, the world has a beautiful piece of art, and she can relax, knowing she made something awesome.

It was an inspiration!

It’s also nonsense.

This framework sounds fantastic, but in life, it is dangerous.

That feeling leads us to rely on “inspiration” to get something done.

“Inspiration” is fleeting, and runs the moment fear pops up. That keeps us from the work we want to do that creates and leads us to the work that sustains.

It’s ironic that inspiration leads us to a life of subsistence, and nothing about subsistence is inspiring.

Always remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was it built all at once.