You Can Just Build Things

Now that I’ve launched my first product, it makes me realize how much I’ve overcomplicated building things.

I’ve shipped more in one week than in the last month, without sacrificing the quality standard I want to maintain.

Some people hold off from shipping (or even just building) entirely because of perfectionism.

I felt the same for years.

But perfectionism ≠ caring about quality.

For me, perfectionism was about fear.

I had to build the perfect product before I could show it to anyone because I didn’t want to be criticized.

I was stuck in this mindset for years and it slowed my progress.

Now that I’ve launched I’ve been able to have my first few user conversations and understand how I can quickly improve what I’ve built.

As I’ve been dogfooding the product, I got annoyed that I couldn’t edit any of my links (an MVP limitation).. so I built the functionality in a day.

I wanted to add better real-time click data in the app, so i’ve spent a day and a half rebuilding my click analytics system and it’s much better.

The balance I’m trying to find now is between shipping useful features fast and taking time to build something with care.

But I don’t want to disguise procrastination as caring about design.

The more you ship the faster you get, and it doesn’t have to be at the cost of great ux.

If I were starting over again I would build (and ship) as much as possible.

And I’d do it in public.

I haven’t shared enough of my journey in real-time (e.g. posting a screenshot to Twitter), but having a public timeline of events is a great way to stay accountable.

This week, pick one thing that annoys you about a tool you use daily.

Build a simple solution, ship it somewhere that people can see it.

Lower the stakes my making progress the goal.

Have a great week.

Cole

P.S. If you found this letter helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend :)