Ali Abdaal on what he’s learned from launching his least successful product:
I have learned this lesson so many times, that, when you are trying to do too many things, things go wrong.
This is something Cal Newport talks a lot— a lot about in his new book, Slow Productivity, which is a really good book. Principle #1 of slow productivity is to:
- do fewer things.
Principle #3 is:
- obsess over quality.
(Principle #2 is: Work at a natural pace, but that doesn’t quite apply here.)
But, like, do fewer things and obsess over quality — in this context, we didn’t obsess over quality. The quality bar was, ‘Is this a keyboard that Ali would use?’ (And, it is.)
And, ‘Do fewer things’ was like, we were just still trying to do way too much in the business.
And so, if I had my time again, and I could tell— I could say something to myself from two years ago when we started rolling this, it would be,
- ‘Don’t take on a new project unless you can commit large amounts of focus to it,’
and,
- ‘Doing something half-baked is worse than doing it— than not doing the thing at all.’
The ‘move fast and break things,’ MVP approach to launching a product to your audience is great (optimal, I’d argue) — as long as that product isn’t physical.
Be sure to watch Ali’s entire vid if you’re a creator working on a new offer.
— Tang
Ali Abdaal’s owned platforms include: Feel Good Productivity and AliAbdaal.com.
