I Want To Be Faster Than My Ideas

This is a slight revision from a blog post I wrote on my website back in May 2014.

There’s going to be a moment in your day-to-day where you’ll be challenged with doubt that your plans could be of any good to you in the workplace. It could be worse; you might not have any ideas to begin with. You’ll snag on every emotion that keeps you from getting anything done- mostly apathy.

You’ll do it later. There’s not enough time in the day. You’ll set it as a priority once you complete your (already growing) backlog of Suddenly Important Things. When you finally shift into a mode where it’s time to get shit done you’ll stop-because this time you don’t know how to plan it. Every good idea follows up with a airtight plan, right? Should you write it in the Notes app on your phone? What about on a legal pad or iPad? Should you type it all on your laptop? It has to look official.

No. It doesn’t. This dilemma is like finally wanting to lose weight but get antsy because your running sneakers isn’t the right name brand.

The real problem isn’t your idea or your sluggish attitude. You’re trying to plan and produce at the same time. You want to write and edit simultaneously. You can subconsciously edit or improve the speed in which you do both, but in the end you’ll complete your project with that strange nagging feeling that you could’ve done that faster. You didn’t because prior teachings told you that doing everything slow-cooked wields better results. Quality over Quantity and all that. To disprove that would be foolish, but to say that producing something quick without dropping quality isn’t worth the practice would be outright costly. You’ve already picked your two on the work triangle: Good and Fast will never come cheap. If you’re aiming to become a freelancer today I guarantee this will get in the way of everything you do professionally for the rest of your life.

While you’re told time and again to just create and ship it, you can’t always produce something “just because nowadays”. To be fair, you’ll get your fill of spontaneity for the day if you decide to, but what happens after that? Do you feel any better about getting something done? There’s random action and then there’s action for progress. Most of the time you’ll need to get the lead out and beat the expiration date that your thoughts have. The date isn’t a metaphor either: Have you ever had an idea and later on abandoned it because you didn’t immediately start? That wasn’t necessarily doubt. You hesitated and your great idea literally lost it’s freshness the longer you did(Speaking of which, Leo Widrich wrote a great article about how fresh ideas make for better problem solving and more creativity here).

To prove that speed is indeed a factor , you could say that if you’re tasked with an assignment with a deadline but no desired word count maximum, you could go all out because in your mind you’ve already completed half the requirements. You’ll work faster, get to editing sooner and get your point across quicker with plenty of time to revise as you see fit. For the most part you’ll be researching for your arguments and it’ll seem like you’re not doing much of anything. That’s just the roller coaster of work: since you don’t have to worry about how long the project is going to be you’ll dive into writing and editing at a much faster pace, trimming away extra prose most common with meeting word counts and finally getting to what you really wanted to say. You can bang out more work consistently and with increasing quality(even when it’s due with 500+ words) when you stretch yourself to work faster.

Marie Forleo, one of my favorites when it comes to sharing good advice, wrote a post I return to constantly when I start to slow down. When your task needs to be done within an hour instead of a week, suddenly there’s no shame in your game. You throw aside rigid methods and protocol aside all for the sake of completion and positive feedback. If it works out in your favor you’ll see people imitating your methods because they have things to get done too.

Once you give yourself a “pens down” cutoff and permission to be rough around the edges you’ll start to exercise your work ethic for the better. Sometimes that all you need to give weight to the even the most fleeting thoughts.