Firsts shouldn’t be so hard

Starting something new shouldn't be hard. But, it is. I think Newton's first law explains why this happens.

An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will remain in motion.

Of course Newton is talking about motion, but I think it applies to behavior as-well. There's a certain momentum to continuing to do the same thing you have been doing.

If you've been doing nothing, it can be easy to continue that path. And starting something new takes a disproportionate amount of energy. However, If you're already seasoned and consistently doing that thing, habits slowly make it easier to continue over time.

This is my first blog post.

Well, not really, as I've written many technical articles before this. But, this is the first that will be more "Official". And, just like anything else, it's hard to start. There's a certain motivation to polish until perfection. To "set a bar" that future articles can live up to.

But, I'm deciding to back away from that. The most important thing isn't that I set a bar of quality. It's that I start a habit of launching. Instead of focusing on the quality of the first post, I need to focus on the consistency of the first 10.

So, welcome to the first of 10.

Some other thoughts I had about starting things

A huge hobby of mine is listening to unreleased music. For the past couple months I've been listening to old & unreleased Kanye tracks.

When Kanye released his debut album "The College Dropout" in 2004, it sold 441,000 copies in the first week. Debuted at #2 on the US billboard hot 200. And was chalk-full of bangers like "Through the Wire", "Slow Jamz", and "All falls down".

It was incredible. And his first album, can you believe it!

Except it wasn't his first album. Or first songs. Not even close. He released numerous mixtapes before that. And did years of beat-making before that.

And some songs were good...

But a lot of the songs were... not.

But, guess what? It doesn't matter how good his firsts were. His legacy isn't great because of his first album.

Likewise, when creating new products I try to take that philosophy to heart. It doesn't matter how good the first version of the product is. It will always improve in v2,3,4 etc.

The whole point of version 1 is to get the ball rolling. To get the inertia started. And start reaping the benefits of consistency.

So, just ship it. And see how it goes 😄.