In search of perfect is procrastination

I’m so guilty of this.

We go searching for perfection. The perfect to-do list. The perfect blogging tool. The perfect community tool. The perfect knowledge management tool. The perfect way to make money. And I just don’t think it exists. It never will.

Searching for tools and perfection is procrastination and it stalls our growth.

We go searching for education. We think once we have one and we just have the right process in place and once we’ve bought enough courses. And once we’ve read all the right books. Then we’ll be ready.

Education and knowledge seeking is another form of procrastination, we’ve forgotten that the best way to learn is often by doing.

We go searching for connection and community. We think we need the right connections and support network to get going. We spend hours on Twitter. We try to get the most upvotes at Product Hunt, Indie Hackers and Reddit.

We become misguided in what real community looks like and it becomes exhausting and frustrating. Perhaps we only need a handful of people who truly get us.

We go searching for the perfect growth hack. We spend hours tweaking our words. Changing our branding. Pretending to be friendly. Spamming inboxes. Seeking the latest tools. Automating this, that or the other.

We celebrate hockey stick graphs and go quiet when they don’t bring the results we need.

And in all of this we forget what is common sense. Being an indie founder, to me, is going back to what makes sense. What brings value. What is simple and effective. It goes back to making and creating.

An indie founder is about exploring what is different. Or what is new. It’s about understanding the stress and anxiety that comes with exploring freedom.

It’s about knowing that initial marketing happens through conversations and delivery of value.

It’s about knowing that we can’t nor want to operate like a “real company”, and we simplify accordingly.

We don’t want to be doing all the things. We want to focus on what we enjoy or piques our interests.

Nothing is every perfect. There is always more we could be doing. More strategies. More tools. More tactics.

There is good enough. There is progress. There is satisfaction. There is doing what feels right.

But ultimately, there is what works for you, and only you can find that out.

🌻