Circling Around The Truth
Dreaming big is contextual. Sometimes the smallest ideas deliver the biggest returns.
Building anything is a constant process of facing yourself head one or your unconscious circling around in your mind as new truths become clearer in an ever-changing environment.
Three Truths in Twenty-Four Hours
Your first and most purest ideas are usually the best. It’s easy to flesh out from them, add more meat to the bones because of dreaming big and all that we’re told to do. You could be in the building wilderness fattening up your idea, only to have to come back to it in the original form because fundamentally the idea was fine as it was. I can’t say much about this right now in relation to CLICKED! but let’s just say there was a fundamental part of the app that we’ve had to revisit and essentially return to the version we had in the pilot this time last year. One year of dreaming big to only return to a mustard seed sized plan, and I’m actually grateful.
The lesson is that context will impact the size of and ability to realise a dream. Stay agile in plans and spirit.
Sometimes, it may seem like you’re wasting time or not moving fast enough. The truth here is that you have to give yourself grace and patience to learn the lessons for that stage. Lately, I’ve felt that I’ve been circling around the same spot for a few weeks, not quite moving forward, but when I soar above and take a bird’s eye view it now looks to me like I was testing different moves, enlarging the circle I was spinning in to investigate more ideas, sense check possible plans, only to return to original idea. See point one above.
Lesson here - it’s not time wasted, there’s a duty to explore different ideas and pressure test different options, even if it is frustrating when you’re in the midst of it. As one of the co-founders remarked - it’s all learning!
Finally, you think you have the slimmest MVP possible? Think again, because it’s likely you can go slimmer and scrappier. Again, it’s so contextual and you need mental flexibility to know that the vision of the MVP can change as the environment around you changes. In our case, as we’ve experienced new parts of the build, tested new ideas, had some stalling starts in new directions and basically learnt more about our product, our team and our early users, it’s become clear that the MVP had unknowingly inflated, so we’ve had to go back to the chopping board to trim the fat and return to some original ideas. See point one! lol!
The lesson - keep an eye on scope creep - sometimes you don’t know it’s happening, because it’s all about context at the time and perhaps that is why you end up circling (point two) until things become clearer again and you learn to trust your original plan as per point one.
It’s all bloody interconnected and will drive you mad, but eventually clarity comes again, you leap frog and gain a crazy amount of new ground.
Have a good one!