In undertaking the creation of a new newsletter, I had to think about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. Now, that means taking a bit of time to think about it… but NOT overthinking it. You can’t jump into a black hole every time you want to start a project or streamline a process and be highly productive.
Course correction is a tool you can use to be more efficient. The idea around course correction is to pick a few ideas, do a quick pros and cons analysis, and start. Things don’t always work out the way you might envision them but that’s okay. Course correction gives you the freedom to change a piece of the process without revamping the whole.
If you find the idea of starting quickly difficult, then use a timer or hard deadline to avoid overthinking. The key is to start your project quickly. Here’s why… you cannot possibly think of every single scenario around execution of your project. If you just start, then streamlining and saving time happens much faster because you are forced to course correct. Course correcting allows you to make changes “on the fly” to increase efficiency and that can’t happen if you are still thinking about it. You need to be actively working a process in order to adjust it.
Course correcting does have a right and wrong way in this scenario. The right way is to make small changes or singular changes. If you make big changes or you change four or five things, then you may not know what, of those changes, is working and you may not see a positive result. The way those changes interact with each other can also affect whether or not you see a positive outcome.
For this newsletter project, I went back and forth a bit on my primary execution tool. I could use Gmail… I didn’t have a giant list of people to send it to and it didn’t need to be fancy. But… what if I might want to do more later? I decided on Mailchimp. Here’s why… it’s the more efficient solution. I can have a simple link for people to get on the list, it’s free, it’s easy to use, it does the heavy lifting. Simple, clean, efficient… that means more time for teaching my furry girls how to take selfies.
The next decision to make… what the helvetica do I name this thing? I didn’t want to stew on this, I really didn’t. I had an immediate idea and used it while I worked on the content. By the time I was ready to publish something more relevant came to me. I never went down a rabbit hole and I never spent time overthinking it.
Finally, content. What the should I write about? I chose the simplest thing ever… “Write what you know.” Blam! Done. In record time, 20 minutes, I had the initial details ironed out. These are the kinds of things that can easily spiral into a rabbit hole of overthinking. You could literally spend weeks on a tool choice weighing the pros and cons of Mailchimp-like programs. You could spend days on a name. Weeks on a topic.
Instead, if you really want to get more shiitake done, you just need to start. I might have to change something as things progress. I may have to course correct. But, look at all the time I’ve saved… now, you’re reading this newsletter and, well, shiitake got done…
- Total newsletter project time start to execution:
- 20 minutes total project design
- 20 minutes on a header design in Photoshop
- 10 minutes setting up Mailchimp
- 30 minutes designing the first issue and saving as a template
- 3 hours or so on the writing (I revamped and revised a bit)
Moving forward… I have set up an Evernote Notebook for capturing ideas and for writing each newsletter. I estimate spending 2-3 hours per week writing each issue which includes gathering research and notes. I don’t want to speed up the writing process too much because improvement is the primary goal… faster would not achieve better results.
What projects are you working on? Can course correction help you move them forward?
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