Wait a Minute… Why are We Doing This?

I recently commented a post from DHH on Elon Musk’s algorithm to ship anything. It is a more advanced and refined version of the simple idea I want to outline in this post.

Here’s the algorithm:

You’d be well advised to try to remember it or even implement a version of it in your team.

The takeaway is simple:

Shipping great things fast starts with a meticulous process of elimination.

The best founders and operators - the top 1% - are world-class at challenging assumptions and saying no to most suggestions that come to them.

Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should

With no-code, anyone can potentially become a builder. There’s no problem with that - there are so many things to build.

But oftentimes, builders like to build beyond reason. Our brains are wired towards problem solving: faced with a new challenge, it takes a millisecond to instantly switch to problem solving, optimizing, rationalizing, automating.

Experienced no-code ops professionals and automation wizards are no exception. On the contrary: the more skilled you become, the more ways to solve the problem presented there are, the more you get pulled into problem solving mode … and end up solving a problem not worth solving after all.

Ask why every time and say no most times

Before shipping anything, ask the following question: why are we doing this?

Challenge that the problem that is presented to you deserves your attention, and time. There are no such things as quick automations.  Even if you can build it in 15 minutes:

• You’ll have to fix errors
• You’ll have to maintain it in the future
• You’ll need to document what it does
• You’ll have to manage future dependencies
• Etc.

Spend your first 15 minutes evaluating whether it’s worth solving for in the first place.

Once you’ve made that a habit, you can upgrade to Elon’s algorithm.