When building your company what’s your biggest risk at the moment?
The answer depends on your company stage and line of business. It also changes based on your progress and external circumstances.
Are you focusing on those at full speed or avoiding the issues? Often, it’s something between. Hard stuff does not necessarily mean difficult. It’s just extremely important but scary at the same time.
Without checking whether the Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead leaves a way out and wishful thinking for the desired outcome. Calling the cards removes all the ambiguity on the issue.
That’s in the core of every procrastination. We drag our feet so we don’t need to face the musical chairs.
It has been studied that when you’re giving out bad news you prefer to give the good news first to soften the blow (for your comfort). But when you’re receiving the said news you want to hear the bad news first.
In Google X they call it tackle the monkey first principle. Focus on the thing that makes or breaks your future. Worry about the other stuff later. If the monkey needs to recite Shakespeare ignore the pedestal till the monkey knows the lines.
This is so easy to say but so much harder to put in practice. Every writer and creative artists know the pain of producing something. Even mundane tasks are so much more appealing at that point than doing the actual creation.
You can learn to do the hard stuff first but it’s no fun. It’s like sales. Nobody likes to hear no all the time but you can get used to it. That’s what it takes to make something happen and build something: grit or sisu as it called in Finnish.
