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@alexknowshtml
Created February 13, 2010 19:08
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At this point, you might say I'm a habitual launcher. That's right, "shipping stuff" is habit forming behavior.
It wasn't always this way, of course. My work ethic usually involved procrastination...not because I was lazy, but because I thought I worked best under pressure.
What I found out was that I was more interested in the act of completion, the act of achieving. That resulted in the process of getting there feeling painful for me, and became something I wanted to avoid.
It was when I got more comfortable zooming out from the BIG launch, and realizing that there were lots of little milestones along the way, I was able to change my perspective. If I did this right, I could launch something almost every day...or at least every week or two...and all of those little launches would add up to my larger launch goal.
With IndyHall, for example, my goal was initially very simple and self-serving: I wanted it to be easier to find other people to collaborate with, and I DIDN'T want to have to leave Philadelphia.
Rather than focus on those big goals, I broke it down into small, achievable shipments. Launch a conversation. Launch an event. Launch something as a team. Support somebody else's launch. Launch a business model. Launch a community clubhouse supporting the aforementioned launches.
Repeat.
By focusing on the small, launch-able achievements, I got to experience the elation of a successful launch often, and more people got to come along for the ride and experience their own successes. Lessons were learned along the way, making each subsequent shipment that much more successful, achievable, and satisfying.
Years later, I'm surrounded by a community of habitual launchers, helping create even more successful launches and launchers with everything we do.
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