Seth Godin talks all the time about “shipping.” It’s this idea practice where we set a deadline and then we meet that deadline, no matter what. The product isn’t always going to be perfect. In fact, it’s rarely going to be perfect. There are going to be flaws.
The beauty of the flaws is that we can learn from them. As soon as we, or someone else, identifies where we could have done better, we set the deadline for the second version. And then we meet that deadline. And then the third, and so on.
After a few releases It’s like we become machines. Really awesome machines with frickin’ laser beams on our heads. The more often we deliver the more comfortable we get with hitting that publish button. Every release becomes more refined than the last and pretty soon, we’re pumpin’ out some high quality crap if you know what I mean.
I see a lot of bloggers get discouraged because they’re not getting comments on their posts or their stuff isn’t being shared as much as they’d like.
Guess what, even the best bloggers don’t hit a home run every time they step up to the plate. In my opinion, the best bloggers are the ones that strike out completely, dust themselves off, and hit publish again the next day.
That takes guts.
I’ve quit before. I understand the desire to publish something insanely awesome and feeling like it’s never quite good enough.
What we need to understand, and what it’s taken me about 1,000 blog posts to realize, is that the three pointers at the buzzer don’t come without some early morning gym time on a weekday.
Keep shipping.
