Tag: inspiration

Dream in Years, Plan in Months, Ship in Days

This guideline pops up often inside Automattic via folks like Matt, or me, on internal memos when discussing how best to balance product planning, strategy, and execution. With a bias toward action, we aim to learn more quickly by launching directly to users and customers.

Source: I first saw this message in 2015 via a tweet by Luke Wroblewski.

Luke later shared a poster version on Twitter in 2016, which I purchased for my office Zoom background (buy on Startup Vitamins).

DJ Patil, US Chief Data Scientist during the Obama administration tweeted an expanded version in 2017:

Here’s the full text from DJ’s hand-written note on White House stationery.

Dream in years
Plan in months
Evaluate in weeks
Ship daily

Prototype for 1x
Build for 10x
Engineer for 100x

What’s required to cut the timeline in half?
What needs to be done to double the impact?

DJ Patil

I love this philosophy for product strategy and execution because it puts the right balance on each activity.

Dreams take time and effort to accomplish, and a clear product vision means looking ahead enough to inspire and motivate people to join the mission.

When we don’t know an accurate launch date at the beginning, monthly plans split the work into smaller projects and tasks that’ll bring improvements out to the public quicker. This means we learn faster, measure the immediate impact of a launch, and track usage as close as possible to real-time.

Speed matters in marketing, business, and product development. Sometimes we aren’t confident the current change is the right one, yet shipping before we’re fully confident leads to a smarter set of next changes — informed by the people using the product.

Ship daily, measure weekly, and plan in months to find out what works sooner than later.

🚀

SOUL-mate Decision Framework

I love this “SOUL-mate decision-making framework” shared by Aman Bhutani, CEO of GoDaddy. How do you know if a current, or new, role fits well?

Something you want to do.
Opportunity to help people more than yourself.
YoU should bring something special and unique to the role.
Learning is key, there has to be something you’re learning in the role.

Hat tip: Matt.

The S is for Something you are hungry for (not just interested or passionate about – truly hungry for). This will make sure you wake up every morning ready to succeed in the new role.

The O reminds you that there should be opportunity for everyone and not just you. Successful people do a lot of things right, and luck plays its part, but they also ride waves.

The U means that YOU must bring something special to the table. There must be a reason you are a match – you should have a competitive advantage over others.

Finally, L is for learning. If you are not going to learn anything, don’t take it. Remember that this often comes from the people just as much as the role itself.

Aman Bhutani on Twitter

Beginnings

It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded in fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.

This very simple step is all that is needed for the new responsibilities ahead.

From Consolations by David Whyte.

Software: Solve Real Problems For Real People

Yearly reminder – the goal of software developers should be to solve real problems for real people. Refactor the user flow before your code. —Nikolay Bachiyski

Zeldman’s Theme

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report-Web Design News & Insights Since 1995 | Web design news and insights since 1995 - cropped

Jeffrey Zeldman. The godfather of web standards, the guy who first got me hooked on CSS and HTML, and who introduced me to WordPress. Zeldman.

10 years later? Zeldman.com uses a theme I helped make for WordPress.

Mind. F’ing. Blown.

I love my job. Thank you, Jeffrey, for getting me started and for continuing to inspire.

(Full screengrab for posterity.)

You Are What You Make

I’ve always done kind of weird, strange things, and that’s what I get hired to do: weird, strange things. The type of work you make is the type of work people will hire you to do.

Joshua Davis inspires me, not because he is a world-class Flash artist that creates complex, 120,000-layer files in Illustrator in five minutes1, but because he isn’t afraid to be himself. In fact he’s been extremely successful at creating art and websites that are as individual as he is.

One of my goals for 2009 is to find a balance in my work as a web designer/developer with what I find important and valuable in life. If I produce work that isn’t fulfilling, or if I feel like I’m not working towards doing stuff that matters, it isn’t because I’m doomed to serve a particular client or style—but because of the fact that what I’ve done is what people hire me for.

Maybe it’s time to make something a little bit different?

1 Read about Joshua’s work at Apple Pro Profiles: Joshua Davis.