The Most Common Excuses People Make (And How To Get Past a Them)
It helps if you know what to do.
It helps if you know when to do it.
It also helps if you have the skills, abilities, and resources to do it.
Of course, the reality is that you need none of these things to start.
Here is a list of common excuses that many of us constantly use to delay action:
“I don’t have a team.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“I don’t have the capital.”
“I don’t have the expertise.”
“I don’t have the motivation.”
“I don’t know if now is the best time.”
If you’ve ever said these to yourself, now is a good time to look hard and long at those statements.
Fight back.
Make each excuse prove itself why it’s true—because the real truth is that you can figure it out how to get past it.
You don’t have to be a genius and you don’t have to billionaire and you don’t have to be an expert with 20 years of field experience to start.
You just have to prioritize your work, be deliberate about how you spend your time, live within your means, and keep rebounding after you mess up.
That’s it.
Instead of designing your logo and buying the domain for your website, call potential clients.
Instead of browsing Banana Republic’s last sales email, set up a Gmail filter to hide emails like those and go talk to a customer.
Instead of raising money and giving away all your equity, put together a PowerPoint that looks like what the software will look like and get your first customer. (Customers pat you today and you never have to pay them back. Investors will own your business and decisions until you buy them out.)
2 Minute Action
Write a Facebook or LinkedIn post asking your network if they know any experts you’d like to talk to.
Look at your calendar and cut out a little time on one or two days of your week to work on this project. You may have to give up social or TV time.
Define the 3 features of your MVP “minimum viable product.” This is the bare minimum you need to make a sale or get a user. This is derived from Eric Ries’ “Lean Startup.”
Send an email asking your students, clients, patients or customers for feedback.
This App You’re Using Is No Better Than CDROM
Have you seen this one in every hotel?
Control this TV with your phone
The benefit of the app can’t be that it replaces the remote. The remote works just fine. Why do we need to replace it?
If we’re going to build an app, it should be doing more than the remote. It should beat the remote.
The magic of an app can’t be that the same capabilities of the remote are now on a shiny screen!
We already went through that!
That was CDROM in the 90s!
How is that better?
A lot of resources go into technology products and if we’re developing with a lean mindset, this product really needs to justify why it exists.
That product really needs to justify why it took so many developer hours and venture capital.
There are a few times it’s okay to invest in something to achieve “feature parity.”
Feature parity just means that the new thing has the same capabilities or features as the old version.
This can be okay but only under certain conditions, like when it enables you to build more or better future features at less cost or more stability or by using less computer processing hours.
That’s an investment. That’s justified.
Having a lean mindset means that tasks, features, and innovations are all fighting for their lives to stay on your task list.
2 Minute Action
You have a list of things to do?
Great.
Spend 2 minutes right now, going top to bottom.
Everything must fight for its life to stay on the list.
Good questions to ask:
What might happen if I put this off?
What might happen if I never finish this?
What You Have To Do
What you have to do is exactly what you decide you have to do.
And that part is up to you.Do what will get you the result you want. Scrap the rest.Most of the time (following the Pareto principle, here) we spend 80% of the effort to get only the last 20% of the results.ACTION:What's something that you're doing that's causing more pain than it's worth? Can you stop doing it right now?You can Pareto-Optimize your life, one small step at a time:Do the bare minimum to get the results.Say what you need to say, and scrap the fluff.Write only enough to get the message across.