Start with a Minimal Product: Do Not Let Preparation Become an Excuse

Seven Ways to Become More Capable—How to Act Complex things are usually difficult to fully understand at the outset. Strategy is only a broad direction. Once you have thought something through, the most effective approach is to begin immediately, doing and refining it bit by bit. Avoid excessive preparation. Traditional education contains an implicit habit of incompletion. Schools treat knowledge as preparation for the future, rather than a means to accomplish something now. From primary school through secondary school, college, and a doctorate, people spend years preparing. That prolonged preparation creates inertia: never completely finishing a task or producing a finished product. Without experiencing the achievement of completion, people use being unprepared to avoid difficulty. In today’s environment, waiting until everything is ready may mean missing the opportunity. Nobody can prepare completely. The best approach is to enter the arena. You may take some hard knocks initially, but this can be the fastest way to improve. Peter Thiel established a fund providing startup money each year to twenty college dropouts under twenty. Harvard’s president criticized the program as blatantly misleading students into entrepreneurship. But learning through practice is also learning. Who knows what people outside traditional education from an early age might accomplish? How do you overcome excessive preparation? First, make a minimal product. With no resources, how? Anything structured that carries your thinking and can be used by others counts. An internship itself is not a product, but a systematic account of its lessons can be. Reading a book is not a product, but an insightful analysis of it is. These are not complex products, but minimal ones that can be developed and improved. Through that vehicle, your abilities, reputation, influence, and sense of achievement gradually grow. Have the courage to make and release that first minimal product. Continually revise it through criticism and feedback, iterating quickly. That is the right approach to rapid action. Work has techniques and methods. A capable person never stops exploring how to improve the steps. #Dedao audio summary of 精進 ---- Robin: ‘Begin. Keep learning and adjusting through doing. Do not let being unprepared become an obstacle or excuse.’