Creating Your World

It takes a lot of hubris to bring an idea to life. You’re convincing reality that your fiction deserves a rightful place in it.

And as that thought comes to life, you start to build a world around it. It’s an exciting and overwhelming opportunity – to create your ideal world based on your principles and ideals. It can be the foundation that makes or breaks your budding business.

It’s a great idea to set those principles down before you go to war trying to bring that fiction to reality. In that vein, here are my principles for my future world:

• “If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” – Chinese proverb

• I will own the project, and if I cannot get an answer from a co-worker or vendor, I will tread another path. “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” – Marcus Aurelius

• I will stay focused, and any new ideas will be put into the parking lot for later review. “Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming around.” – Richard Branson

• Discipline and consistency will be the greatest expression of creativity and virtue. “…Prioritize and execute: stop trying to take on everything at once. If you are stretched too thin, you’ll fail at everything.” – Jocko Willink

• Keep the company as small as possible, taking on only as few projects as necessary. The goal is to build the ultimate work organization for the ultimate employees. There’s a reason that mammals outlived the dinosaurs.

• Procrastination means missing information. I will break down the problem into smaller parts, see where the block is, then ruthlessly attack it.

• Never lose our why. “He who has a strong why can overcome almost any how.” – Nietzsche

• “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.” – Andy Groove, former CEO of Intel.

• “Relax, look around, make a call.” Crisis will happen, and often snowball in chaos. You are to remain relaxed, look around and make the best decision to focus efforts based on the ground situation. You can’t handle all problems at once, you’ll flail. “Relax, look around, make a call.” – Jocko

• No business plan, people plan.

• Take inventory. Don’t bring in any new tools or supplies or partners until you know what you already have.

• The right tool makes all the difference “When all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Abraham Maslow

• Call yourself out on your own bullshit.

What are the founding principles of your world?

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Also published on Medium.