You and I are very curious.
This is a blessing but also a bit of a handicap sometimes.
Our curiosity can drive us to pursue interesting things that are a distraction from what we are actually trying to build. Especially if what we are trying to build is difficult.
Let me tell you about some common mistakes of mine. I would love to know if you face the same things and how you deal with this.
Curiosity is a frequent trait of experts. We fall in love with a theme and jump into every rabbit hole it provides. This is what makes us accumulate specialist knowledge (of the conceptual, not practical, kind). And it's wonderful.
I'm building a business around a question that has guided my curiosity for years ("How clever people can make money from their knowledge”), so that means I have a lot of opportunities to get distracted.
And distracted I've been:
I've built systems in Notion for insight capture, task management and content creation that took longer to set up than the time I've saved with them. I've abandoned these.
I've spent hours building a Figma file to create cover images for all my posts. It hinges on a content taxonomy that was also a delight to think about, but could end up being too convoluted.
I've drafted and started coding multiple small tools that I could eventually place on my website to act as lead magnets or ways to get people's emails. Most sit unfinished in my Github or a local folder.
Recently, I've had multiple conversations with friends that are also trying to build their own businesses around their unique skills. And many of them report the same trap.
They, like me, often get stuck in the interesting part and avoid doing the boring part.
Getting a business off the ground is not about the clever systems you build, or the smart automations you assemble, or that great magnum opus that will be your next massive blog post.
A business is about providing value and capture some of that value.
In short, it's about making money.
Making money is dependent on making sales and making sales requires you to do a bunch of hard, complex and sometimes vague things. Talk about a trifecta of procrastination.
Messaging people online, awkwardly ask for referrals, putting together an offer that people need and can understand, maybe building a few funnels. All of these things can feel foreign to curious minds that prefer to think about abstract ideas or play around with software that feels like a toy.
If you see yourself doing this, try and stop it. You know you must stop it.
But I'm asking gently because I'm aware this is not easy at all.
But this is what I've tried for me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Some things that help get an handle on this:
I use a lot of timers. Pomodoro timers, 5-minute timers, you name it. Timers have helped me immensely. They are like the compartments of a ship that stop flooding in the bow from reaching the aft. Timers interrupt mindless activity.
I plan my week (very loosely, because it is also unrealistic to plan every minute of your week). This starts each day with an idea of what I'll be working on. Routine helps tame the anxiety of “If I don't do this now, I'll forget it".
I always carry a very small notebook. It's always with me. I use it both for tasks and notes. Cannot overstate how this has been like an anchor I can rely on.
I actively avoid signing-up for new productivity/task & knowledge management apps. I've tried all the apps you've heard of and some you haven't. An app will not solve your focus problems. And while they are easy to sign-up to, they require a lot of hidden effort to set up and make use of. They are VERY distracting if you like to play building your own systems.
This is very important: I do my best to make progress visible. Nowhere this is more evident that this very substack you're reading and the spreadsheet where I track content ideas that I post. Making progress visible is very motivating and especially true for boring things (I don't love promoting my posts, for instance).
I have a list of bigger goals, roughly shaped like a product roadmap. The main thing is not the roadmap or the time frames, but mostly the breaking down of big goals into straightforward tasks.
Bonus: Cat's Idea
Now for a mind-bendingly simple idea I JUST read from Cat Mulvihill1 (yes, not the first time I learn something great from her)
And now, back to you:
Are you sometimes too curious? How do you tame it?
Do you occasionally spend too much time playing around with the cool part and neglect the boring businessey part?
I'd love to learn more about how you handle this.
And if my post was useful in any way, I'd love to know too
(making progress visible, got it?)