Just Start

Erik Andersen
1 min readSep 11, 2020

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Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

Before starting anything new, there’s always a “fuzzy front-end”.

(aka the very beginning when you don’t know what the final solution will look like or how to get there. All you know is that there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.)

It’s easy to spend a lot of time here — you build the business case, run a few ideation workshops, create a plan, etc. You can spend months here just trying to bring certainty to the ambiguity. No one wants to fail.

Stop it.

You’re already months behind.

Embrace the fact that any new initiative will have high degrees of uncertainty. And nothing will reduce that uncertainty faster than just getting started.

And start sooner than you feel comfortable.

Spin up some proof-of-concepts. Rapidly prototype a few designs with your target audience. Don’t waste time on ‘getting funding’ or ‘approval’ — many of the world’s most innovative products made absolutely no business sense to begin with (for an interesting read, look up the origin story for play-doh, pet rocks, slinkies, or post-its.)

So just start already.

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Erik Andersen
Erik Andersen

Written by Erik Andersen

Senior Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience. Also an independent coach, teacher, and public speaker. My opinions are my own

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