Speed is everything in business.

The fast eat the slow.  The fast are the ones with the advantage.

I can launch a product and do it perfectly before you can have a meeting and talk about it.  Speed is everything.

How do you keep accelerating?  How do you floor it and get a better engine all at once?

Speed is everything, man.  It’s the end all-be all.

If you are slow, you are behind and you have to work three times as hard to catch up.  Speed in business is what needs to happen.   Elephants danced, but the gist is that you’ve gotta move your business, your life and everything fast.  You’ve gotta get the fast habit.

The Cult of Done Helps.

But I’m gonna talk about the cult of speed.

1. Realize that someone already has your idea, and your idea is rotting.  Get it out there and put it to use.
   
2. Realize that time is the enemy of all:  done today is better than perfect tomorrow.
   
3. Realize that perfect is a ruse:  even in art, getting the gist out there clearly is important.
4. Realize that complex loses.  Make your widgets super simple.
5. Small Projects Are Always Better Than Big Ones because they get done.
6. Realize Everything is an opportunity to demonstrate virtuosity.
7. Realize that speed is soon nothing special and the ticket to the table.
   
8. Realize that most mistakes are recoverable, most mistakes are easy to fix.  It’s impossible to fix it when you’re beat.
   
9. Realize that it’s easier to sustain a lead than it is to overtake someone.
10. Realize that people are all getting better.  Work on getting better, faster.
11. Realize that all your soliders need to be on the field.
12. Realize that your first draft goes live and you can correct it later.
13. Realize that today isn’t soon enough and your ideas are already rotten.
14. Realize that NDAs and bloated meetings are a waste of time.
15. Realize that your throughput needs to get faster and higher and more, and it only does so when you have and increase your capacity.
16. Realize you need a timer to measure and firewall projects from eating days.
17. Realize that the faster you get your stuff done the more time that you can spend on the people you love.
18. Realize you need a list to work off of to keep going fast and you need it with you somehow.
19. Realize you must learn time saving shortcuts to produce more.
    

That’s it.  That’s the cult of speed.  That’s what you need to do–there are 19 things that make you faster, better more.  And that’s it.  There’s nothing to add, but you have to get faster, today.  Others are.  America needs to be obsessed with speed.  Making quick decisions, producing faster, having a culture of speed and getting things done.

I’ve got three projects, nearing completion.  Days away they represent two things: the last of my ‘freelance’ projects where I’d take any work possible, and also a hefty sum of money.   These projects have been in some version of nearly done forever. They have been an irritant and a distraction because all are–for various reasons–late.   Speed matters, and the customers are–in all cases–at least partially responsible for the delays.  I’m also partially responsible, and that sucks.  I have good clients though that generally understand the way things are, and that they had a role in this stuff.  I don’t feel like I’m exposed to a default risk.

But still–and I will joyfully honor my word–I would not have taken the projects had I known then what I know now.  Stuff that can’t be delivered and done fast, open ended stuff….makes me into more of an employee than I have a stomach for.  On the one hand, I have a commitment to honoring the people that are affording me to get out from under a pile of debt, that are supporting me financially.  I have to honor the money they sent and earned.  That means that I have to take a yoke and bear it.  And that sucks.

When I deliver a product I created, I’m selling someone else.  I’ve put them in my world, and I’m offering it to them.  When I apply for a job, it is me trying to accommodate another.  Oh, to be sure there is some give and take there, but fundamentally, there’s a difference between blog sales guy and freelancer.  I’m still a freelancer, but I’m selling what I want, not what I can find.  It’s easier, selling what I want, too because I can build a personal brand around it.

The revision hell that I’m in now is due to not having a finite ending to a project.  It’s hard to take control after the fact…

The thing I’m working on today is a little project (incidentally lagging behind but not part of the above three projects) for International Tax LawyerPhil Hodgen that I thought would be done in March.  He was in Dubai for much of that time.  It should be done & revised tomorrow from my end, possibly today.

Then I’ve got to come up with a coherent, form based design interview that takes 5 minutes or less and allows people to express themselves.