I’m slightly obsessed with making the most of my days. I have grand ambitions and goals that each require enough time to fulfill. Mine include books to write, places to go, and interesting people to work with. While I have no family “goals,” I want to spend enough time with them that they enjoy me—and I enjoy them.
While your ambitions and goals differ from mine, we most likely share the desire to fulfill our goals, regardless of what they are.
I tend to keep my specific goals a secret from other people. I’m open about the fact I try to write and publish one nonfiction book a year. (This year, it’s the Effective Public Speaking book.) But you don’t know which book I’ll write after that one. That’s because I don’t know either. While I suspect I do know what that book will be, I don’t yet know if it’s two books or one book. In the worst case, it’s three books.
That’s because I treat my books as if they are products.
If I focused on the direct path, I would outline the book and then write it. That’s the direct path because it assumes I know exactly what has to be in the book. But how often do I know what any book needs? My answer is “never.” Even when I’ve delivered workshops or talks about the topic. I never know because I learn as I write.
That’s why the “direct” path rarely works. Instead, we need experiments to be more effective.
Experiments Cost Less and Are More Effective
For years, I’ve said that I want to learn early, not fail fast. We can do that if we consider how to manage two kinds of risks: that of failure and that of success.
Most of us know about the risks of failure. That’s why we plan. I use a traffic app for appointments even if I’ve gone to that place many times before. I can’t know in advance when the road crews are out repairing roads and I’ll have a detour. Or when there’s traffic. Some people test recipes before they make them for company. In product development, all testing manages for failure risks.
But too few of us consider the risks of success. If we plan just enough that we can conduct short experiments, we learn faster. And we might get lucky and hit on a reasonable solution the first time out. In that case, we don’t waste a lot of time on planning.
If we don’t get lucky? We learn from that small step, and use that learning to inform our next step. That does require adaptability and resilience, but it’s often much faster than a lot of up-front planning.
Experiments and exploration can feel as if we’re taking “too long” to finish because we’re not following the direct path. However, if we test our experiments as we proceed, we can create a superior result. That’s because we learn as we go, not learn at the end. That’s faster.
Beware of people who say, “It’s a simple solution” and ask you to take the direct path. Complex problems rarely have simple and direct solutions. Instead, consider how you can learn fast and de-risk the indirect path. It might not look effective—but it often is.