One of the errors I have made in the past regarding business ideas is thinking that I could succeed where others have not. Since I tend to be very detailed oriented and focus on one project at a time, I am always optimistic about the outcome.
I remember when I started to do Amazon FBA, I felt like I had selected the best product. That I was going to make it the best selling version of the product. I didn't think about the hundreds of ways that things could go wrong.
As someone rightly said, when you are working on a business idea, everything that could go wrong - will go wrong.
Then I experience a sad phase where I am SHOCKED that things didn't go as planned.
And then, I start over again.
I am happy that I have the energy to try again. But the over optimism in the beginning to need to be balanced.
I recently started to think about a new business idea, and I felt that familiar sense of over optimism. It took me going back to read my retrospective notes after a few business experiments to notice the patterns.
The other significant pattern I noticed is that I tend to think about products that are in abundance already. Sir Abe pointed the blue ocean strategy to me some time back. That made me realize how overly optimistic and unrealistic I was being about the effort, time and money that would be required to set my products apart from the market.
I am still in the early stages of my new venture so I am happy to reassess things sooner than later. I want to learn from my past and do things a bit better for the next iteration.
I remember when I started to do Amazon FBA, I felt like I had selected the best product. That I was going to make it the best selling version of the product. I didn't think about the hundreds of ways that things could go wrong.
As someone rightly said, when you are working on a business idea, everything that could go wrong - will go wrong.
Then I experience a sad phase where I am SHOCKED that things didn't go as planned.
And then, I start over again.
I am happy that I have the energy to try again. But the over optimism in the beginning to need to be balanced.
I recently started to think about a new business idea, and I felt that familiar sense of over optimism. It took me going back to read my retrospective notes after a few business experiments to notice the patterns.
The other significant pattern I noticed is that I tend to think about products that are in abundance already. Sir Abe pointed the blue ocean strategy to me some time back. That made me realize how overly optimistic and unrealistic I was being about the effort, time and money that would be required to set my products apart from the market.
I am still in the early stages of my new venture so I am happy to reassess things sooner than later. I want to learn from my past and do things a bit better for the next iteration.
I think what happens with optimism is that for it to provide longterm benefits it can't be tied to outcome.
For example, in
The better way that I'm trying to rear towards is to be optimistic about the making and the thing and the purpose it serves. Don't worry about whether it's going to be used at all.
I want to caveat that last statement by saying don't worry by attaching outcome -- usage in this case -- to optimism levels. Leave optimism blind to outcome. Just be optimistic about your making process.
The other process of reflection proves useful when it comes to being thoughtful about questioning why isn't it used? What makes it not good enough? What's it trying to do? Is it needed? Stuff like that.
This reflective side can then figure out a path forward -- even if that means removing something -- for the optimistic maker to then execute.