Free Beer Tomorrow
Or- You're an M.V.P. (but not that kind)
Think. I’m thinking about
My Father-in-law, Bill owned a bar in Pittsburgh until he passed away. A small sign hung behind the bar proclaiming “Free Beer Tomorrow.” Over the years I’m sure more than a few mildly inebriated customers licked their lips, rubbed their palms together, and made plans to show up the next day for all that free beer
But tomorrow never comes. Today just becomes yesterday’s tomorrow.
I sincerely hope that in the game of life, you are someone’s most valuable player. But today we’re talking about a different M.V.P.
In the business world, there is a concept known as the Minimum Viable Product. This is defined as a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate an idea early in the development cycle.
Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, has been famously noted for saying:
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Now, I am not in the product development world, but I find this sound advice nonetheless. I think we can learn a lot from the “Iterate Fast and Release Often” philosophy of entrepreneurship. Too often we wait for everything to be perfect to act, to start a new habit, or take any action to optimize our LOEs
No sense going to the gym today, I’m going to be traveling for the rest of the week.
I would start tracking my diet, but there’s that party this weekend that will mess everything up.
The problem is that there will always be a reason to put off beginning.
I don’t want to be the one responsible for Little Orphan Annie’s great depression, but tomorrow isn’t ‘only a day away,’ it’s ‘always a day away.’
There is another associated product development principle, the change adoption curve. You’ve probably seen it used to explain why some will camp on a city street overnight in the rain for a new iPhone while others get by with their flip phone until it breaks.
In this scenario, we are both consumer and product. Iterate and innovate. Start a new workout program. If it sticks great. If not try another. Get up a half hour early and meditate for a week, see how it goes. Maybe it will stick. If not try something else.
When innovators fail, they at least fail, in the words of Teddy Roosevelt, “While daring greatly.”
It’s easy to be a laggard. To wait until everything lines up perfectly. Then surely life will be easy, but here’s something I’ve learned.
- Lean in close, I don’t want everyone overhearing.
Do you know when everything is actually going to line up perfectly?
Probably tomorrow.
Just make sure you don’t spoil your diet or workout with all of that free beer.
“How many tomorrows will you let become yesterdays before you get off your ass and do something?”
Read. Range By David Epstein
Epstein does a great job of making the case against over-specialization. By developing ‘range’, which he defines as “diverse experience across multiple fields” we become more relevant, and the future will bring wicked problems requiring multi-domain experience.
Write.
I am finally on the final chapter of my memoir, Tough Rugged Bastards. This final chapter is a reflection on a time of my life that began over 22 years ago on a barstool in Darwin, Australia when the football match on T.V. changed to images of the twin towers. Repeatedly while writing I was reminded of the words of George McDonald Frasier. Frasier wrote of his time as a member of the British 14th Army fighting the Japanese in Burma in his memoir titled, ‘Quartered Safe Out Here.’ He said:
“Looking back over fifty-odd years, life is like a piece of string with knots in it. The knots being those moments that live in the mind forever, and the intervals being hazy, half-recalled times when I have a fair idea what was happening in a general way but cannot be sure of dates or places or even the exact order in which events took place.”
This is as accurate of a description as one can hope for of the way the mind works, choosing specific events to recall in stark relief while others fade and commingle. I have found that focused reflection brings at least some of those ‘hazy, half-recalled times’ a little clearer, like when the optometrist flips the switch between choice A and B.
Now that I am nearing completion after almost a year, I am simultaneously ecstatic to be finished and sad to see it go, for fear that some of these wonderful recalled memories will again fade into my murky unremembered past.
Repeat. Words of wisdom from those who said it best.
“Get action; do things; be sane; don't fritter away your time; create; act; take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt
“Start before you’re ready.” ~ Steven Pressfield
“You don't have to be good to start ... you just have to start to be good!”
~ Joe Sabah
“Just do it.” ~ Nike
“In the quest of fighting procrastination and paralysis through analysis, to make the first step is to accomplish half the task. Getting started will align everything and generate an enormous momentum to do the task at hand”
~ Dr. Lucas D. Shallua
Thanks for reading. See you next Thursday!
Range is on my reading list this year!
Another solid submission. You do incredibly well with a weekly deadline, I am so jealous of your consistent ability to produce. I particularly liked the knots v. haze quote. I had not heard it before, yet it rang very true. I found my mind wandering when I read your posit on early adoption and its roll in both a personal and professional context. Especially when considering the podcast from last week with the tension between the SME and the young leader. Are the SMEs the "early adopters" because they are closest to the "market", and most apt to feel opportunity, or are they laggards, content in doing what worked yesterday. Obvious rhetorical question, meant only to show that I read your post, enjoyed it, and it got me thinking.