3.5. Heartbeats and Handcuffs
âSo keep your project small as long as you can. And donât allocate too much money at the start. People do stupid things when they have a giant budgetâthey overdesign, they overthink. That inevitably leads to longer runways, longer schedules, and slower heartbeats. Much, much slower.
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To maintain the core of your product there are usually one or two things that have to stay still while everything else spins and changes around them.
And thatâs a useful constraint. You need some constraints to force you to dig deep and get creative, to push envelopes you hadnât thought to open before.
So to preserve what you love, have your team write down the things they value most and build a plan to continue them. And remember itâs not necessarily the obvious stuff that binds people to your companyâit can be small things, silly things.
These days, Iâm wary of seemingly simple incentive rules that promise amazing results. They are rarely simple, and often leave collateral damage. Usually, a better option is to have a frank discussion about what we should value and why. Why should we care about exploring more designs early on? Why should we aim to speed up engineering velocity? Once people understand and buy into those values, they can make the best decisions on how to apply them.
Donât start negatively, and donât start small. People will often focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty.
Do yourself the favor of getting lots of options, then culling the list down to a short and manageable size (five max); then make the best choice that you can, given the time and resources available to you, get on with it, and build your way forward. Note that if youâre doing this with prototype iteration, you donât have too much at stake, and you will be able to adjust as you go, before you really reach a significant investment. And once you make a choiceâthen embrace your choice and go with it. When the questions that lead to agonizing creep into your head, evict the thoughts, and direct your energy into living well the decisions youâve made. Pay attention and learn as you go, of course, but donât get caught with your eyes fixated on the rearview mirror of decision regret.
This letting-go step relies primarily on personal discipline. Keep your reframed understanding of decision making handy, and be sure to win the internal argument with yourself when youâre tempted to rehash and ruminate. Put in place the support you need to stick with itâfind a life design collaborator or team to help remind you why you made the choice or choices you did; make a journal entry about your decision, and reread it when you get confused. Find what works to enable yourself to enjoy your choices fully.