“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” — Mark Zuckerburg

I read a few articles recently that got me thinking about speed:

• Steve Jobs Danced To My Song
• Money Is Attracted To Speed

Jonathan Mann moves fast. He’s been writing, recording & posting a song a day since 2009. Over 4 years.

He’s made a lot of forgettable songs. He’s also had songs featured by Bing, TechCrunch & Apple.

How?

Speed

He writes 365 songs a year. When he moves that fast — his hit percentage doesn’t have to be 100% or even 10% — if he makes one hit a year — that’s just .2%.

That’s a problem for most people — but since Jonathan is so prolific, he has can handle the risk of only producing 1 big hit every year. When people see that — they’re impressed, but all he’s really done is take more chances than anyone else.

Johnny does this with writing. He releases novels prolifically — sometimes in just a week. The word count he manages to produce is insane. But, the only secret he has to his success is speed. He moves fast & produces a ton of stuff.

It seems that success is often tied to the number of chances you take. Speed lets you take more chances.

Things You Can Use To Increase Your Speed

Planning

For the longest time — I abhorred plans. I didn’t like them & they always felt constricting.

I love my flexibility & didn’t want to sacrifice it.

Then I actually tried planning — and I was surprised. Planning actually gave me more freedom. Now of course you’re able to create plans that are so strict that they allow for zero flexibility, but the best laid plans are structures — not strict. They’re flexible enough to bend & change — not break when something changes in the field.

With the right plans — instead of trying to flail all over the place & thinking on the fly 100% of the time — you can spend a dedicated amount of time simply planning & when done, put your focus towards actually executing your planned out activities.

Systems

Systems were the word of the year for me in 2014 and I’m not sure there’s anything more effective for scaling your business than properly building & utilizing systems.

Systems take the guess work out of your business, blog or side-project. They let you automate things that zap your time & let you focus on building new resources.

When you can’t completely automate a process, a system will still help you build the next process more efficiently.

Teams

Once you have a plan & have some basic systems in place — you’re able to expand your influence by building a team.

When you begin building a team — you’re literally increasing your influence exponentially. If you’re hiring the right people, building your team becomes greater than simply 1+1=2. Usually it’s 1+1=3 or 1+2=5.

The results of adding action-takers to your team tends to have exponential rather than linear results.