From now on I’m just doing it

One of my goals for 2010 is to just do it. I released Squareleaf this year and it taught me a few things:

• It doesn’t pay to be a perfectionist – All websites have bugs, you just haven’t found them yet. A few were found in Squareleaf in the first few weeks, I was disappointed, and while it may have driven away some potential sign-ups it was ultimately a good thing. I got emailed by people to tell me what was going wrong and this meant they actually gave a shit enough to send an email. Cool. If I was still looking for perfection with Squareleaf it would still not be released. As it is, it’s out there with a couple of bug fixes and some new features, 400+ users and some good suggestions from them for new features.
• Release early and release often – Get it out there. See what people think, get feedback from people who will use it. See if you have an audience and how big it is going to be. Stop worrying about the details – most of the time people don’t care.
• The hardest step is the first one – The biggest hurdle is releasing something for the first time. Is it going to be shit? Will people hate it? I was bricking it when I released Squareleaf and emailed some friends and colleagues to ask them to check it out. It’s better to try and to fail than to not try at all.

So, from now on I’m not going to waste time worrying about perfecting the small details. I’m not going waste time wondering if an idea will work – if an idea for an app/product/service/whatever doesn’t require any serious time or money investment then I’m just going for it. Suck it and see.

I released two apps last year and carried on my two blogs. In 2010 I want to be putting out a lot more than that.

There’s always so many reasons not to do something – next year, forget the reasons and just do it.