Principle — Trust your instincts

Seth Godin talks about the problems with trying to give customers what they want.

No one actually understands what the market wants. When you choose to make something magical instead, when you bring passion instead of calculation to your work, you’re as least as likely to get it right as the guy who is selling out.

Do you dare to follow your passion rather than the market?

So true, it almost hurts. From the great Seth Godin.

You don’t need more time
…you just need to decide.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

Lately, I’ve been working on a small project at work. When it started I had to make some initial decisions, one of which was a choice between two very similar options. I didn’t fully understand the difference between them, so I just chose one and continued.

Somewhere, I felt that I probably should have taken a few moments to understand that difference, because it did feel rather important. But I felt rushed, so I didn’t.

Halfway into the project, we encountered a problem that forced me to redo most of the work. Guess what was the cause? That very uninformed choice, of course. Had I spent 10 minutes more up front, I’d saved myself several hours of of rework.

Moral of the story? Trust your instincts. Don’t ignore that uneasy feeling that something is not quite right.