Launch Every Day
Almost three months ago I officially launched Riskology.co. Last week, Take This Job & Shove It launched to the world.
It went really well. Someone on Twitter even said that every person they follow was talking about it. Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to jam the airways, but thanks for letting me have my 15 minutes of fame.
Anyway, all the talk about launching got me thinking a bit about how launches normally go:
That’s fine. The world needs hype and excitement from time to time, but I’m more interested in a different kind of launching, the kind that goes on behind the scenes and if you’re making any headway in life, happens every single day.
The invisible launch.
It’s the slow and steady transformation of an idea to a valuable resource over the course of time. It’s more about experimentation than “launching.”
Launching can take all kinds of shapes and forms and should happen every day, really. Create new ideas, explore new territory, challenge yourself to try new things and push yourself to share your experiments with the world.
Not just new things either. Re-launching old things every day is just as important. Look at everything you know and force yourself to see it from another perspective. Why does it work the way it does? How could it work differently? What could make this narrow idea apply to more people? What could make this broad idea more relevant to fewer people?
Ask yourself these questions every single day and then test them out. That’s what artists do.
No matter how big or small, they launch new ideas every single day. The relaunch old ideas every single day. They test and they tweak and they test some more. All the while, this process is on display for the world. Everyone gets to see the method to the madness. Everyone gest to decide which ideas live and which die. Which are right and which are wrong.
Launching every day means asking the world for the participation in your process of creation. We create for the world, so we ask it what it wants.
Launching every day means putting away your ego and the idea that you know best. Your role becomes one of testing and tweaking based on feedback and offering to the world instead of forcing your creations onto it.
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If you’re a writer, ask yourself a new question every day. Then answer it. Launch it to the world and see if it’s accepted. If it is, expand it, add to it, make it even better and launch it again.
If it isn’t accepted, ask why and try again. Keep what worked and change what didn’t. Relaunch it and see what happens. Keep tweaking until the world tells you that you’ve got it right. Then launch it again.
If you’re a visual artist, make something new for people to look at every day. Find new materials and work them into old pieces. Take old materials and work them into new pieces. Everyone wants to find the niche that works for them, but don’t ever become satisfied once you’ve found it.
Satisfaction breeds complacency and complacency becomes stagnation. Give your audience what they want and then challenge them to want something else. Listen to your audience and let them challenge you to create something else. Do this every single day in bite size chunks and see how your work and the perception of it changes.
The same goes for musicians. Write a new song every day and see which ones last. Take your best ones and change them around until they’re unrecognizable.
Launch new projects and side projects all the time. Experiment with new instruments and look for different ways to play your old ones. Add too many parts to a song. Take too many away from another. Let your fans tell you which songs are best and then rewrite them and see if they’re still liked. Most all, change something every day. Launch every day.
If you’re an adventurer, go to new places instead of the same ones you’ve already been to. Meet new people. Talk to strangers, and not just the ones that look friendly. Find new ways to travel and find new ways to experience the old ways. Tell people about your culture and listen intently when they tell you about theirs.
Go home and launch the stories of your adventures on anyone that will listen. Find new ways to tell people about them and add more details to your old stories. Change people’s perception of the world every day and let them change yours.
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When you launch every single day, you recognize that there’s no such thing as perfection, but each test and tweak and offering gets you one step closer to it. You realize that there are no special occasions and that any day is as good as any other day to launch your idea.
Actually yesterday is always better, but today will do, and tomorrow is too late. Most of all, you realize that nothing is ever good enough. There’s no such thing as perfect, but if you don’t strive for it and launch along the way, “good enough” will immediately become “not enough.”
So, what can you launch today? What can you offer to the world?
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Image by: taygeta2779