Over the last few months, I’ve received dozens of emails from readers asking me how to get their idea or project unstuck.
I’ve done my best to answer everyone’s question individually, but for every person who emails me directly, I can be sure there are two or three others with the same problem who haven’t spoken up.
So today I want to talk about how to get a project unstuck by leveraging a particular framework. This framework works for virtually any type of project in any industry, and I’m certain it can work for you, whatever your sticking point.
A Caveat: No, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every problem.
My intention isn’t to give you the answer.
My intention is to give you a framework for approaching problems so you can systematically improve your chances of getting unstuck and getting your book, business, blog, or whatever to the next level.
If you have any feedback on the framework, leave me a comment below – even the best framework or system can be improved!
The endstate is essentially your ultimate goal. It’s the final situation you want to create for your project.
Think of it this way: in a perfect world, what would your project look like when it’s finished and shipped?
Why is the endstate so important? Because without it we have no guidance or direction for our mission, and the mission is exactly how we reach the endstate.
A good endstate is measurable, tangible and detailed enough to allow us to craft our mission.
Examples:
Being too big or too small with your endstate can hurt your plans here.
While it’s good to set your sites high, there are diminishing returns when you start setting impractical endstates relative to what you’re capable of achieving. That’s why it’s important to remember that an endstate is composed of multiple OBJECTIVES.
Objectives are those mission-critical events that lead us to the final endstate.
There are progressive objectives in just about any scenario, and each objective is the result of hitting smaller objectives along the way.
In the Army, when you lay out progressive objectives, each one laying the foundation for the next, they call it nesting.
The endstate for the military in the European theater of WWII was Allied control of Europe. This meant the mission, vaguely speaking, was to defeat the Axis power. Obviously, if you’re a lowly company commander, this endstate doesn’t help you much on the ground, does it?
That’s why in the Army they ‘nest’ their missions; they identity major objectives that must be met to meet the endstate, and they continue to break these down into smaller missions for lower units. So as a Company accomplishes their mission it feeds into the Battalion’s mission, which feeds into the Brigade’s mission, etc.
Each unit’s mission must nest with the higher unit’s mission.
In this way, if I’m a company commander and I execute my mission successfully (securing the bridge), this allows the Battalion (one command level higher) to meet their mission (secure the southwestern region)
Applying this to the world of entrepreneurship or art is simple: if you’re setting your endstate way beyond your capacity, that’s okay, but remember – you can only execute the mission at your current level.
So go ahead, by all means set your endstate as having your book published in 50 countries and languages across the world. But this isn’t your mission. You need to keep backward planning (see below) until you get to an actionable mission for the level you’re at (which, most likely, is publishing a book on Amazon and getting digital copies in the hands of readers).
Backward planning means identifying every objective that must be met to reach your endstate and planning from the endstate backward to your present situation.
Backward planning is effective because you’ll never end up with a giant gap of uncertainty – every objective will lead to the next, which means you’ll never be at a loss for what to do.
If we’re not detailed with our backward planning, it can often lead to massive gaps. This is the reason most people’s projects get stuck – instead of backward planning and creating a detailed, step by step roadmap for what to do, they end up with an Underpants Gnome plan.
In the second season of South Park, there’s an episode about underpants gnomes. Underpants gnomes are gnomes that sneak into peoples rooms at night to steal underpants as part of a broader business plan:
Step 1: Collect Underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
When we set unrealistic or impractical endstates, or when we try planning toward an endstate months or years out without meticulously working backward, we’re usually left with an Underpants Gnome plan. Instead of establishing strict, actionable objectives, we have an idea of what we want (Collect Underpants), and a general goal (profit), and nothing in between to get us there.
You can avoid an Underpants Gnome Plan by aggressively chunking and thrashing your plan (see below).
Chunking means breaking up your plan into actionable, bit-sized pieces with estimated time requirements and unique ship dates for each chunk.
The idea behind chunking is to identify every single step along the path to your endstate in a clear and precise manor. By identifying a ship date for each ‘chunk’ we eliminate procrastination or missing deadlines. By estimating (as accurately as possible) the time requirement to complete each chunk, we avoid the possibility of hitting a massive, insurmountable objective half way through our project (stuff like that can cripple a project).
Chunking is more art than science, but it starts with getting really, really detailed in your plan by identifying:
1) Facts – what are the facts of your project? If you’re bootstrapping a software company, a fact might be that you have one engineer on your team capable of coding the product. If you’re writing a book, a fact could be you have very little money to outsource editing. Facts are important for identifying limitations and restrictions (which affects your timeline and the chunking process)
2) Assumptions – what are you taking for granted or hoping/guessing will happen throughout the plan? A common assumption: I can do it all myself. This is almost never the case, no matter what the project.
3) Limitations and Restrictions – this is where you identify where facts or assumptions will limit or restrict your planning. So if you have one engineer to code the product, this limits the ability to start on the next product until the first one is done (without negative side effects).
A good rule of thumb for chunking: break everything down into objectives that take several hours or less to complete.
“Write Book” is a bad chunk. Breaking it down into parts – Table of Contents, Outline, First Sentence, First Chapter, Title, etc. – is much more effective.
You want to be able to accomplish a piece of your project every day to maximize momentum and keep your project moving forward.
Thrashing is the process of removing everything but the essential.
Very few products require more than a few features. This is especially true when you’re first starting out and you’re trying to prove an unknown (i.e. sell a new product to a new market). The fewer features you have, the more you can focus on what matters – and the less likelihood your project will go over time and budget (the killer of all startups).
But there’s an even better reason to strip your product/service/idea of extraneous fat (read: unnecessary features): it is necessary for idea validation.
Idea validation is determining what features you need based on iterative testing with users.
Ultimately, idea validation is about product/market fit – are people willing to pay for your product or service. In a matter of speaking, idea validation determines whether what you create has a reason for being created.
This is the biggest hurdle for most aspiring entrepreneurs to get over – sometimes the idea you have isn’t as good as you think it is. But the only way to find out is by testing it in a market. The only way to do that is by selling it to your customer.
If your customer doesn’t want it, time to think of a new solution.
If your customer likes it but there’s a holdup (cost, features, whatever), then you can continue to test new variations of the same idea.
The goal here is to test a decent sized audience so you’re not relying on just one person’s input, who could very well be the anomaly if you had taken a larger sample size.
Taken from the principle of lean starting, if ten people love what you make (and pay you for it), you’re probably onto something.
While I mentioned thrashing as step 4 in this framework, it’s really an ongoing process that begins the moment you have an idea and doesn’t stop until you’ve shipped.
There are always things you can cut, slash, limit and refine. This is not a bad thing! Think about it – probably the best things in this world (product, service or art) are probably great at one thing, not okay at a bunch.
Your job is to be excellent at one thing. Go for depth, not breadth. Leave mediocre for the try-hards.
This is a really simple breakdown of the framework I use when I start a new project. I didn’t include all the details here because they’re usually not the most important part. What’s important is a clear vision and an idea of the path or roadmap to get there.
That’s the purpose of this framework – to help you focus on what really matters.
If your project is stuck, I'd guess it has to do with lack of clarity or focus, and that is usually the result of failing to execute one of these steps I outlined in this framework.
If you found this helpful, you should definitely check out my guide and workbook on starting, finishing and shipping projects: The Gunslinger’s Guide to Starting and The Gunslinger’s Workbook.
In that guide and workbook, I go into more detail and give you a workbook to actually frame your project. I’ve received some great feedback, so if you’re stuck with a current project of looking to start a new one, grab it (it’s free).
I hope you find this framework practical.
Leave a comment below and let me know what steps you’ve taken or what framework you’ve used to ensure the success of your projects. And if you’ve found yourself stuck, let us know where and why, so we can work out a solution.
It’s simple enough to understand that you must instigate to be successful.
It’s much more difficult to put this understanding to use.
And if our logical conclusions aren’t actionable, what’s the point?
Here are a few quick tips I’ve compiled from some extremely clever, creative and successful people on how they created great works (everything from successful blogs, to best-selling books and cashflowing startups).
Note: I took the liberty to elaborate on their original ideas. If you discovered a different but noteworthy lesson that I didn’t cover, let me know in the comments below!
I hope this helps (I know it’s helping me as I start on my next major book project and an even more epic business project - more updates on that later).
Enjoy
Credit: Al Pittampalli (successful entrepreneur and author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting)
In a compelling and insightful interview I did with Al Pittampalli (compelling and insightful because of Al, not my interviewing skills), Al explained the first draft of his book came off a little stiff and lacked personality.
Al knew he needed to find his own voice, so he looked for inspiration and found it, of all places, in the movie Jerry McGuire. There is a scene in the movie where Jerry, the protagonist, has an epiphany and stays up all night to write a manifesto on his business.
Al did a quick search online and found the actual manifesto (a bit of trivia: the writer of the script, Cameron Crowe, actually wrote out a full length manifesto to help Tom Cruise get into character on the movie set). After reading the manuscript, he knew it was the perfect style for his book.
“Why don’t I try, instead of using my own voice, to use Jerry McGuire’s voice.” [Al Pittampalli]
For the next several weeks, Al woke up early in the morning (3am) and pretended to be Jerry McGuire as he rewrote his book.
Instead of losing his voice, he was able to refine and develop his own.
Thanks to just a bit of inspiration-seeking, we now have an incredibly powerful book that is uniquely Al.
Credit: Hugh MacLeod (artist and author of Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity)
The most creative, ambitious, and daring ideas are, by their nature, personal. So friends, family, and peers can’t help you.
Nobody can understand your art or your project better than you. You know your art deeply and personally; others only see the surface.
The more mad or bold the art, the less likely someone can give you good advice on what to do, how to do it, or if you should even attempt it in the first place.
“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.” [How to Be Creative]
Instead of asking for advice, go make your project or art the way you want it made.
Credit: Tom Morkes (yea, I'm crediting myself - that’s how I roll).
I’ve listened to hundreds of podcasts, read hundreds of books, absorbed a lot of information from a lot of different people, and put it all to work in various ways throughout my life, including during active duty military service. You might expect there’s a unifying technique on how things ought to be done if you want to be successful.
The truth is – there isn’t.
Some writers wake up early– others work better midnight to dawn; some leaders yell a lot, others are quiet and contemplative; some entrepreneurs develop multiple businesses simultaneously, others only one and focus their entire energy behind it.
Every single writer, designer, artist, entrepreneur, leader and warrior has his own rituals, schedule, and techniques; no two share the same.
So the point is this: If you’re stuck, don’t worry about figuring out whether Twitter is better than Facebook is better than Pinterest is better than whatever for conversion.
Focus on what matters: the work only you can do, in the way only you can do it.
There’s no one right answer; only a bunch of imperfect solutions.
You won’t know which is best for you until you start (finish, and ship).
Go instigate.
p.s. what are your best creative hacks to get unstuck and kick start your project? Let us know in the comments below!
"I hope they like it."
"I hope it works out."
"I hope they will buy it."
The problem with hope isn't hope itself, but rather when we use the word hope as a replacement for "I wish someone else would take care of this problem for me."
When we "'hope" for things that way, we might as well throw in the towel and get out of the ring.
Here's the thing; you don't have ownership over the reaction, response, or results.
BUT...
You do have 100% responsibility over your actions.
Set a goal. Commit. Follow through.
That is what you have control over. This is what you own.
Don't hope you will do your best - DO YOUR BEST.
What happens as a result is a result and will happen how it does.
Remember, the only thing you control, the only thing you OWN, are your own actions.
Don't hope they will be great, make them great.
Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. [Goethe]
Be bold.
This is the second post in the Seth Godin meetup series. You can find the first post here. Stay tuned and sign up for my free newsletter so you don't miss the next post in the series (hint: it's about designing a website that converts, telling a story that sells, and building a brand that people remember).
If you've been following the blog, you know I attended a Seth Godin event last week.
Seth is the marketing and writing genius behind Poke the Box, Linchpin, Purple Cow, and over a dozen other best sellers.
Below, I've compiled a list of 21 insights, lessons, thoughts, and riffs from the first day of the event.
The main ideas are Seth's, but I've taken liberty to expand and explain to make the content actionable. Enjoy!
Make being on time and shipping on time a discipline. Never be late - never ship late. Set a date and commit to it. Once you've committed to the date rather than quality, the quality of your product will go up.
Once you realize you're a teacher, it's not hard to find students.
Freelancers get paid when they work (hours for dollars), entrepreneurs get paid when they sleep.
Here’s the thing: when you're freelancing, the cheapest possible person to hire is YOU. This is dangerous. It means you’ll keep resorting to hiring yourself. And if you keep hiring yourself, there’s no one to focus on the vision or growth of the company.
So if you’re going to focus on being a freelancer, then hire someone to do the entrepreneurial aspect of your work (to manage resources and focus on growing and expanding the business) or get over your fear of doing it yourself.
People don't know what they want, so don't ask them. Build, ship, refine, repeat.
Your job isn't to persuade or change peoples minds; your job is to amplify the people who already get the joke. The people that understand and appreciate your message - those are the people you should aim to please and delight, not the stranger who doesn't get what you're saying.
Reviews don't matter (good or bad). Comments don't matter. If you worry about reviews or comments, you're letting the lizard brain hold you back.
Sales are a side effect of giving. If you give consistently and for a long time, when it's time to offer something for sale (seminar, conference, book, product, etc.), people will be ready and willing to buy it.
Instead of trying to make a sales call (which immediately puts up a wall and makes the conversation antagonistic), take people to lunch.
If you're going to write something, make sure it's worth reading. Instead of worrying about the masses, worry about the small group of people who want to hear from you. The masses won't read your book anyway - they've already read 50 Shades of Grey, their one book for the year.
Write your book only if you can say to yourself with certainty: this is going to blow the minds of 10 people. Now write out loud for these people.
Everyone wants to be on the Forbes 100 (everyone in that niche, who reads that publication); everyone wants to be on the Inc. 500 list (again, everyone in that market).
By creating a top 50, top 100, top whatever list, you make people who AREN'T on the list want to be on the list; you make people who aren't number 1 try to be number 1 next year; and you make number 1 try to stay number 1.
Creating a list is a self-feeding marketing tactic. Use it if you can.
You can't protect an idea. If you’re worried about someone stealing your idea, stop worrying. It’s a complete waste - you can't keep them from finding out eventually, so why worry?
Ideas aren't scarce. What’s scarce is doing the difficult work to bring the idea to life (because someone will quickly take your place)
Deep (meaningful, personal and few) is better than wide (shallow and many)
It's natural to feel like a fraud. It's natural to be scared of what people might think of you. Instead of stressing out over this, ask yourself this question:
If people knew your story (fully exposed) would they still buy your book?
What do you want? Do you want more customers, more readers, more clients, more revenue per share, more revenue per customer, more buzz about your product, more growth....?
Decide what you want so you know where to go.
When you're more afraid of letting people down than doing the work, you'll do the work.
Do you think Martha Stewart comes up with the apple pie recipe she makes on tv? She doesn't worry about that; she simply curates. Her NAME is what makes money – people want the product because she uses the product. If she had someone else present the material, show it off, run the show, people wouldn't want it.
We want to hear it from Martha, not Martha's team.
If you want to be an expert (in this style, form or fashion), then you can't build a team to tell people about products that they want YOU to tell them about.
Whatever you're building: you can't have insiders if you don't have outsiders. Don't be afraid to make people angry or upset at what you produce. It's important that those people exist - it means they are the outsiders and you can focus on delighting the insiders.
Don’t end the conversation when someone says no to your sale. Instead, tell them a personal story. Tell them how you felt the same way, but then you found out a new piece of information that made you change your mind (I didn't want to buy this new car, but then I took it for a test drive and found the comfort of the seats and the handling remarkable). Or explain how others felt the same way, but that was BEFORE they learned this new piece of information (ex: after they went for a test drive they changed their minds).
Writing a novel is a long, lonely journey with no immediate pay off. It's only payoff, if ever, is after a long, long time. The feedback from your effort takes a while; you have to push for a long time to get any sort of response.
Blogs, on the other hand, have a short reaction time and almost immediate feedback (push, get response).
Regardless of the feedback time, don't let "the lizard brain" neuter your storytelling (if the story you have to tell might offend people, don't change it).
People don’t want to hear what you do, they want to know what you're passionate about, what you struggle with, and they want to be told a story.
What results do you want (from your business, product, book, etc.)? The focus of what you measure will be your results (if you focus on revenue per share, you'll increase revenue per share). Your results are the consequence of where you focus.
What is your super power?
Be remarkable. Be memorable. Be something and do something that many people will hate and that others can’t live without. The more you push to the edge, the more remarkable you become.
By becoming more stereotypical, you become the person to go to for that topic/niche/market.
Don't water down your message.
Be edgy.
Hope you enjoyed these nuggets of wisdom. If you did, I only ask 2 things:
1) Share this post with someone else (spread the love!)
2) Post a comment below and let us know how you're using these insights to improve your business, brand, or blog (or whatever you're working on!).
p.s. if you don't want to miss the next post in this series, sign up for my free newsletter.
Enjoy this post? Check out my book Notes From Seth Godin's Revolution Conference where I divulge everything I learned over the course of 2 Days with Seth Godin.
Stuck?
Maybe you're asking the wrong questions.
The following are 14 essential questions you need to ask yourself if you're starting (or trying to finish) anything. These questions will help you pinpoint where you're bottlenecked, as well as help you break through the hurdles you're experiencing. The following list will help you:
One last thing before we get to the list: none of it matters unless you start.
If you're not taking action, all the questions in the world can't help you write that book, build that business, or lead that organization/tribe/gang whatever.
Use these questions to clarify your proposition. But if you're stuck answering these questions (us over-thinkers tend to do this), then err on the side of bold action.
Start even if you're not sure.
Begin before you're ready.
The answers will come when you start moving.
If you said everyone, you already failed. Be specific. Now get more specific. Now get abnormal (aka seek out the fringe or the people on the edge).
Identifying the fringe/edge/abnormal of your target market is essential in order to capture the early adopters, who more eagerly spread your message.
You can learn more about early adopters in The Long Tail; suffice it to say, getting the small group of people who are SEEKING your product is much better than trying to break into the mass market (more on that below).
The majority of people (the mass market) desire safety and stability, and when given a choice, many people choose the safe route.
Here’s the thing: you don’t have the time or resources to tap into the mass market, so playing to the desires of safety and stability may not progress your goals. Since you will need to tap into the fringes, make sure you understand what they believe. Do not tap into mass market beliefs to sell to the abnormal.
Believe it or not, most people in the world have never bought something new. Shopping is a western luxury; most people in developing nations couldn’t fathom going to the store with the intent to spend money on something they’ve never used before. In many cases, spending money is life or death for these people.
Key takeaway: Focus on people who want to consume something new (and have the resources to consume it). If you're trying to spread an idea in a developing country, understand they probably don't want something new.
If they don’t, how will they find you? If they don't know you and can't find you, how can they buy from you? If you’re hoping to have someone else promote you or sell your content, you’re banking on a gate-keeper to choose you. While possible, highly unlikely. Pick yourself instead by connecting with people and making sure they know you exist!
Actionable step: Not sure how to get noticed? Why not start a kick ass blog like this one and get your name out there?
Trust is a tough word. Someone might trust you because you have integrity, but if you're a mechanic and you offer to do heart surgery on a friend, maybe their trust in you stops with car maintenance. On the other hand, if someone you know has a reputation as the best heart doctor in the world, and he tells you that you need a transplant and he'd be happy to help, you're much more likely to trust him. Trust depends on what you’re selling, what you’re making, and who you’re interacting with.
Key takeaway: Become the best in the world at what you do - be the perceived expert - and then build relationships to establish yourself as a trusted expert in that area. When people wonder who they should go to in order to develop a new line of silk shoelaces, and you design and sell silk shoelaces, there shouldn't be a question in their minds to go to anyone else.
3 ways you can connect:
Everything you’re making, whether you’re writing a book, creating a business, or leading a gang, seeks to solve a problem. If you’re writing a mystery novel, you’re solving the reader’s boredom problem. The more specifically you can identify the problem, the better you can identify how your solution solves the problem.
If you’re selling a commodity, it’s very likely someone will undercut your price. So what makes you stand out? If someone sees what you’re doing, what will keep them from beating you at your own game?
This includes costs to connect, build trust, and then actually sell the product. Even for those writing books or screenplays, it’s worth considering (at least on a conceptual level) how much time and energy you’ll need to put into getting your book or script published or sold.
This refers to the customer himself. If he buys from you, is that the end of the relationship? Or do you sell other products or services that he can come back to and buy later ? Some customers buy often and consistently, and you can predict that they’re lifetime value is much greater than a single purchase.
Example: Amazon determined their customer lifetime value was $33. That’s how much money every customer would bring in over the course of their lifetime. So any time Amazon had to decide where to spending advertising/marketing dollars, they had a standard on which to base their decisions. For Amazon, if new ad space costs more than $33 to attract a new customer, it's not worth the money.
If so, you should either be producing it that way (without losing quality), or you should get out of the game fast (somebody will undercut your prices and drive you out of business).
Speed doesn’t matter…unless it does. If one of the qualities of what you do (whether write, sell, or lead) involves the speed at which you produce/create/execute (say, daily blog posts, or one-click purchasing, or next day delivery), then be fast. Otherwise, use slowness as a characteristic of quality and let your customer know why it takes you 3 weeks to ship your product.
I hope you enjoyed this post.
If you did, check out my book for even more mind-blowing Seth Godin content:
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