Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly…

…at least to start.

If you think about about any level of mastery you have in your life chances are you don’t have it because of one herculean effort that you performed last Tuesday. Chances are that your success is a result of ordinary things consistently done – which lead to extraordinary results.

The correlating phrase here would be:

“Every master was once a disaster.”

Whether it be walking, tying your shoes, or just drinking out of a cup, the first time you tried it I guarantee you were terrible at it. But it was worth the time period in which you did those things poorly in order to achieve the mastery of those skill sets.

Fast forward out of childhood and into entrepreneurial life and what you’ll find is that successful entrepreneurs have learned to embrace failure. They have dropped the negative connotations associated with short term failure and traded up to view failure as a necessary component of long-term success.

In my company we do a lot of product design and development. If a picture is worth a thousand words a prototype is worth a thousand pictures. We have a culture of prototyping in the company and the motto driving that culture is:

Fail Early
Fail Often
Succeed Sooner

In summary, the next time you’re letting what’s perfect get in the way of what’s possible (leaving you in a paralyzed state of taking no action) just remember that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly…at least to start.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly…

…at least to start.

If you think about about any level of mastery you have in your life chances are you don’t have it because of one herculean effort that you performed last Tuesday. Chances are that your success is a result of ordinary things consistently done – which lead to extraordinary results.

The correlating phrase here would be:

“Every master was once a disaster.”

Whether it be walking, tying your shoes, or just drinking out of a cup, the first time you tried it I guarantee you were terrible at it. But it was worth the time period in which you did those things poorly in order to achieve the mastery of over those skill sets.

Fast forward out of childhood and into entrepreneurial life and what you’ll find is that successful entrepreneurs have learned to embrace failure. They have dropped the negative connotations associated with short term failure and traded up to view failure as a necessary component of long term success.

In my company we do a lot of product design and development. If a picture is worth a thousand words a prototype is worth a thousand pictures. We have a culture of prototyping in the company and the motto driving that culture is:

Fail Early
Fail Often
Succeed Sooner

In summary, the next time you’re letting what’s perfect get in the way of what’s possible leaving you in a paralyzed state of taking no action, just remember that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly…at least to start.