Hey,
Last issue I wrote about why your drafts folder is braver than your feed. Before that, why your website doesn't sound like you. Today's pattern is upstream of both — and you've probably been doing it for weeks.
You know that thing, the one you've been meaning to do? The one you know you need to do, but either keep putting off, or don't feel like you have buy in for, or just don't know if you're ready for?
You keep adding a step, or a refinement, or just need to know the one more thing before you can go ahead with it.
Sure, sure, it sounds perfectly reasonable and rational at the time. It probably is. But they all add up into a fog that's hard to see your way through. Bit by bit, they cloud your judgement, sometimes even making you lose the plot on why you wanted to do the thing in the first place.
We tell ourselves it's adding rigor or quality. We should be careful, not impulsive. These additional steps and checks — they're the responsible thing to do, right? Perhaps underneath that quality control — that controlling perfectionism — is a fear.
The Costume
She hisses in the night, "If I miss something, I lose everything."
Scarcity, she has a bite to her. She paralyzes us into thinking the thing (whatever that thing might be) isn't enough, good enough, polished enough, big enough, pretty enough, targeted enough, creative enough, on and on.
I don't think it matters if you have a corporate job or are self-employed either, we do the same things with our best ideas and instincts. Wrap them up and hide them away until they are goldilocks perfect.
The reverse though — that's the magical one. Abundance is a quiet muse. She whispers, "I'm capable of making this call from where I'm standing. If I'm wrong, I'll learn and adjust. The cost of being wrong is recoverable." She knows that the cost of inaction, of long pauses, those costs add up far faster than the cost of less-than-perfect. Ship it. Learn from it. Iterate.
Most decisions, when traced back, are priced like scarcity but shaped like abundance. The cost of one wrong call* is rarely what we fear it is. Leaving a team waiting on you? Higher. Never shipping the thing to see what the world thinks and does with it? Higher. Never sending the email with the ask? Higher.
*The cost is calculated assuming you aren't totally blasé — but if you were, we wouldn't be chatting about this anyway, right?
Courage
A client recently came to me via a referral. Looking for brand evolution and a website rebuild. They didn't run a great agency bake-off or get four quotes. They had a referral, a feeling, and they committed.
Our entire engagement is built on one decisive call made in a single conversation. They didn't optimize for the right designer. They picked a designer they trusted and let the work be good.
In contrast, plenty of businesses run a six-month rebrand process across four agencies and still don't pick a direction. The "process" wasn't producing clarity. It was producing the appearance of clarity while protecting them from having to choose.
But these guys? They'll have built and shipped their next phase — something that will live and breathe and grow with them through their next decade.
Extra steps are doubt in diligence's clothes.
Run with it. Drop the costume and go. It's more likely to make you more human anyway.
What decision have you been holding on to, say for more than two weeks?
Right now, before you read further: if someone forced you to make the call in 30 seconds, what would you decide?
That's your answer.
Everything you've been adding since you knew you wanted to make the choice...
It's fear, rockstar.
Take the leap. It's not reckless. If you were inclined that way, you'd have shipped already without a second thought.
That's issue #3. If it landed, forward it to someone who's been holding a decision longer than they meant to. (You know one.)
In two weeks: another pattern hiding in plain sight.
— Kate
Kate Dole runs Growth Grove, a strategic consulting & design practice for good folks & businesses looking to beat the plateau. She makes the invisible, seen.