Set Sail

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines! Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr. often misattributed to Mark Twain (but what isn’t?)

Does any of the following sound familiar:

You get excited about an idea or project or partnership.

You jump into the deep end and start right away.

A week, a month, a year passes, and suddenly you’re not excited about the idea anymore.

Either the partnership went stale, or the shininess lost its luster.

But now you’re stuck with this thing that you no longer want but feel committed to. It’s like a sandwich that doesn’t taste good. But you don’t want to throw it away because it took a lot of work, and it’s a waste of food.

Maybe that sandwich wasn’t for you. Don’t feel like your work was wasted.

You don’t need to feel guilty about not eating it – about not sticking to the project. Your job in this universe was to make that sandwich for someone else. So seal it up, offer it to a friend and free yourself of the guilt.

Put whatever project you’ve start out into the world. Incomplete or not. Write a blog post, podcast, audiobook, ebook, Instagram post. Let someone else decide if they need this sandwich.

Ship your project. Show your work. Leave a little placard for posterity. You did this, then. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a waste.

And maybe by putting it out there, someone, somewhere, somewhen will find it useful.

Remember: Mozart died broke. Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life. Galileo’s work wasn’t published for 200 years after his death.

Imagine if these guys never put it out there?

14 years ago, as Magician Vlad – as Vlad Kraven – I made this video. It was a poor quality montage of card manipulation. I should never have shipped it.

Except I’m glad I did. Not only is it a time capsule of my poofy-haired magic days, it also got noticed by the guys at Ace Film Festival.

And a few months after I posted that, they invited me to be the hands of the AceFest promo advertisment. It was one of the funnest and scariest things that I had ever done:

That imperfect video would eventually lead to a brief and imperfect career in magic. And it was fun. It will always be a bookmark in the universe that Vlad existed.

PostScript – now that you’ve shipped it, walk away. You’re guilt free. You didn’t invest all of that time for nothing. It’s not perfect, but that’s not for you to decide anymore. You’re free to chase the next exciting hottie of a project.