Good Life Project - Don’t Just Ship It

Episode Date: March 23, 2017

Comes a time you’ve gotta get out of your head and just act. Maybe you want to change careers, start a company, learn to paint, start a relationship, write a book or mount any other potentially transformational endeavor. Think about it, ponder for a bit, suss out the basics, but then stop talking about it, […]The post Don’t Just Ship It appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is brought to you by Camp GLP. It's an amazing opportunity to come hang out with me, with our awesome Good Life Project team, a lineup of inspiring teachers from art to life to work, and a community of almost impossibly friendly grown-up campers from literally all over the world as we take over a beautiful summer camp for three and a half days of workshops and activities that fill your noggin with ideas and strategies for life and create the type of friendships and stories

you thought you'd pretty much left behind decades ago. It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and more than half the spots are already gone. So be sure to grab your spot quickly. You can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes. On to our show. Hey everybody, Jonathan here with this week's Good Life Riff. I apologize if my voice sounds a little bit off. I have a bit of a cold this week, so doing Riff. I apologize if my voice sounds a little bit off.

I have a bit of a cold this week. So doing my best, I may sound a little bit nasally to you. But I am here with you. I had a really amazing experience over the weekend. I actually went to see the musical in New York, Hamilton. And for those who aren't hip to the vibe and what's behind it, it is maybe the hottest show that's hit Broadway in a really long time. It's expanding into cities around the world right now. And the interesting thing is I'm actually not a huge musical person. And this

was a show that lasted about three hours, and I didn't want it to end. It was like I was sitting there and every movement, every part of the show, every song, every bit of music had me absolutely captivated. Several moments I was really choked up and I was actually there with my daughter and I needed to look at her and say anything. I don't think I would have been able to speak a show to the level that that show is, where not just it's a massive, massive, massive financial success, but it is a massive, massive, massive human success. It is a moment in theater that allows you to step out of your everyday life, to enter the theater in a particular state, and to move through a story, to be moved through nearly every conceivable emotion, and to be left different. And it wasn't just the experience of

being there. But as I reflected back on that, as somebody who's a maker, a creator, an artist, and an entrepreneur, I was really marveling at the fierce level of expressed art that has the capability of moving people on that level of making a difference and an impact on that level. And I started thinking about the ethos in the world of making an entrepreneurship and, and so of us, not just in those, but in our lives, there's this term that's become really vogue these days. And the phrase is, ship it, or just ship it. And the idea behind that is, stop toiling around in your mind.

Stop thinking about stuff. Don't try and make it as good as you can get it. Don't try and make it perfect. Make it at a level where it's just slightly better than you being mortified when it hits the public, and then put it out there. And the idea is that when we commit to just shipping something, to creating sort of that minimum viable product in the word of entrepreneurship, that it gets us out of a process of sort of maniacal, relentless head spins, where we're trying to figure out everything by assuming and arguing things in our heads. And it makes us actually create something,

put it into the real world, and let the real world respond to it, and then iterate on that, keep improving and shaping and changing. And in the world of business, you call that pivoting. In the world of art, you call it continuing to build your body of work and repeating and making more work, doing more work. And I was thinking about this in the context of Hamilton and the quest to do not just really good work in the world, but work on the level that leaves people profoundly changed, which is my aspiration. And I would imagine deep down, it's a lot of people's aspirations, even if we don't want to own it because it's a little bit terrifying. And I wonder sometimes whether on the one hand this just ship it mentality does a service by getting us out of our heads and creating something and putting it into the world so that the world interacts with it. But I also wonder if there's a second part of that is not given nearly enough attention. And that ends up doing a disservice to the creative process and to our ability and willingness to stay in the process long enough

to create greatness. And that is, I wonder if there is a lack of attention to a willingness to stay in the process long enough to create genius, to tap what I call your potential gap, to really move through enough feedback, enough iterations, enough repetitions, so that you go from that first thing that you put into the world, which inevitably is pretty bad, to something truly astonishing. And my sense is that the command, just ship it, gets us off the couch. It gets us out of our head and it gets us making stuff. But similarly, it does not prepare us for the often grueling journey that it will take to iterate dozens, hundreds, thousands of times that will get us to that place of realized potential, full expression, standing in a place of our true genius and making a difference on the level we know we're capable of making a difference. And I would love to see a reclaiming of the second thing, which is, okay, so step one is just ship it. And realize that if you get something back that says, no, this isn't right,

the job then is not to commit to one or two more repetitions. The job then is, if this is the thing that you can't not do, that you may be in this for months, you may be in this for years, and it may take that long and that much effort for you to evolve it to a place that allows you to stand in profound, internal, generative, creative, fully expressed potential. And that will be hard. That will take a lot out of you. I guarantee you that, you know, when the first idea for Hamilton, you know, like, popped into its creator's head that Lynn took that. And then, and this is the process in theater is you don't go from idea and then script it and then look for a theater on Broadway. He generally spent years workshopping it and doing it in rehearsal studios. And then even once you've actually created the play and you get into the

theater, it can change profoundly as you bring in actors and they bring in their own unique lens and abilities and capabilities and you see what works and what doesn't work. And it is this fierce and relentless commitment to staying with something where there is a nugget that tells you that this is working on enough of a level

that I want to stay in it. And you still believe that as you go down the road, that you're getting enough validation, that your vision for this is still possible to stay in it. The idea that we should all just get it out of our heads and just ship it is awesome, because it gets us out of our heads and making stuff. And at the same time, my invitation is that that instruction, I think is not enough.

That when you enter an experience where the first step is go from your head into the world, just ship, create something minimally useful and put it out into the world so people can respond to it. Understand that is not anywhere close to the end of the process, that this is the opening shot in a process that will require potentially an extensive long-term and heavy level of investment in your time, your energy, your resources, your emotions, your life. And to get to a level

where you go from shipping that slightly embarrassing first thing to being able to move millions of people, leave them changed, that will take a fierce effort over an extended period of time and require you to also stand in a place of relentless uncertainty for a very substantial part of that. And I would love to see that part of the conversation included. So when you think about whatever it is that you want to do, when you close your eyes and say to yourself, there's this thing in my heart that I would love to get out. There's a vision I have for a book, a job, a company, a relationship and experience that I would love to create. And I would love to create it on a level where it makes a profound difference in people's lives. It genuinely leaves them changed.

Know that the first step is to create something and get it into the world so people can interact with it. And also accept, accept the knowledge that this may be a long, intensive, and involved process. Because if we don't do that from the beginning, then after we've shipped, and after the third variation of it doesn't automatically vault us into a place of, oh my gosh, it's as fabulous as everything I ever dreamed of it being, then we fail to steal ourselves. We fail to actually own the fact that this process will take a lot. And we are much more likely to walk away from something because we haven't prepared ourselves for the fact that just shipping is the beginning.

And there's a long involved iterative process to get to genius. Own that in the beginning. Own not just the first step, not just the minimum viable product, but own the fact that this may be a fierce and long-term process. And own the fact that the thing that you want to create is so deeply meaningful to you and potentially deeply meaningful to others that you are willing to commit not just to that first step, but to the process. That's what it takes to create great work. And that's the conversation that as I left Hamilton, profoundly moved on the verge of tears numerous times, saying to myself, my God, I would love

to develop at some point a level of making, a level of craft in various domains that would let me move people on that level. I know I'm not there. It may take me another 10 or 20 years. But I also know that it's not just about shipping. And it's about a fierce, relentless, long-term commitment to the development of mastery and craft. Let's own that because when we do, that is when our truest potential really begins to unlock itself. So I hope you found this valuable. As always, if it's something you think would lead to an interesting conversation with a

friend, please share it around. Let this be the beginning of a conversation and also hopefully the beginning of an exploration of your own potential, your ability to be fully expressed in the world. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. project.