Just get it done - What I learned after wasting 90 days on trying to build the perfect product

"Done is better than perfect" — Sheryl Sandberg


Before I left my job, I thought we were going to build this product and it's going to be fantastic. As soon as I left my job, we started working on the product from the very next day. Trying to make it the most useful yet extremely economical. We just knew that the product was going to be so perfect, it will have all the desirable qualities needed. We started designing and working on the best procurement strategies. A few weeks later, we had a few new ideas that we wanted to incorporate into our product. This was going to make it even more useful and people are just going to fall in love with it. It is an improvement of the product we were initially thinking of making.

3 months go by and we find out about a completely new material that is unique and better than anything in the market currently. So we think like this "If we are going to make a product, it should be perfect. Why waste money and time on inferior products when we could make a much better product. We just need to work on souring the new materials and change the design a tiny bit.

I look back and think, we have designed, we have innovated, re-innovated and re-re-innovated to make the best product we possibly could But we still don't have a product. The moment we reach fabrication is when we get a new idea on how to improve it further and we think why not make the perfect product?

That is when I land upon the "Cult of Done Manifesto" and it all makes sense. As the 8th point of manifesto "Laugh at Perfection" clearly defines the state of "Limbo" we were in. Perfection is a Limbo and it will cripple you. Do stuff and revisit for improvements only after it is completed.

The whole idea of this manifesto it to get things done. In layman term "get stuff done, get more stuff done, get even more stuff done". So, if you are an entrepreneur, or you wish to be one. This is an important point to keep in mind. "Done is the engine of more"

"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it" — Salvador Dali

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Mentors: The shortcut we all need

This is a video of a clothing sale.

I believe we will be successful when we show the same hunger to learn and run after mentors.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal”  —  Pablo Picasso

Our ability to copy is the biggest predictor of success. Therefore, choosing a mentor in business and in life, is one of the most important decisions we will ever make. Mentoring is a key element in career development and some of the most successful people in history had mentors:

• Alexander the great had Aristotle as his mentor
• Albert Einstein had Max Talmey as his mentor
• Bill Gates had Paul Allen as his mentor

Most of us miss out on this idea and we lose a good part of our life making bad decisions. Mentors are the shortcut we all want. Mentors will help us achieve our goals quicker if we can learn from their experiences and avoid the same mistakes they made. It is also worth mentioning that the people of knowledge (mentors) will not come to us but we must show the hunger and go to them.

“Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don’t care what you do for a living—if you do it well I’m sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor.” — Denzel Washington