I hope you are well and staying away from the craziness of the world. Reading the news does not make for good vibrations! Listen to the Beach Boys
instead!
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This week my younger son, 19, came to me as I was reading on my bed and said he had finished his first song. He played it to me and I was filled with joy. It wasn't
perfect but it was lovely. I told him to put it on his social media and he did so immediately. I know that the new generations are not envisioning careers as we did. They will have multiple sources of income and will choose to carve a life doing what they like rather than go for the traditional model of a steady job, mortgage, marriage, children, pension, etc.
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Of course, they will still have to pay for their accommodation, bills, health, food, future and entertainment as we do, so I told him he would have to monetise whatever
he decides to do in life. I used Seth Godin's expression "ship it", make it public and sell it. He said he didn't know how to do that so I told him that he needed to do the research and acquire the skills he is going to need as required. Now, this particular son is very laid-back and never liked studying so I must confess that I have been a bit worried about his future.Â
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Hours later, he announced he had done all the necessary work to have it up on Spotify. I was going from one surprise to another with him. His brother was up in arms
because, although he liked the song, he could see where it needed "tidying up". The first verse had three lines ending with 'you', the syllable count wasn't great in places and so on. I simply said that some people would resonate with the emotion and not care at all about poetic rules being broken.
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See, my firstborn started recording song covers in his bedroom when he also was 19 and when the first lockdown arrived and he couldn't go back to uni, he worked on his
voice every day and recorded the odd cover when he felt he had it pitch-perfect. He is a great writer with four novels hidden in a computer drawer — they were just practice — and only recently started working with a fellow university student and guitarist to write their own material.Â
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My firstborn loves studying and is a perfectionist. He aims to produce work of high quality. When will you hear his voice on Spotify? When will you read his novels? Who
knows?Â
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This tale of two voices is about someone who ships the goods as soon as they are good enough to him, and about someone else who will only ship his goods when they are
perfect and hasn't shipped anything yet. I don't know who is making the right decisions at this point but I have Seth Godin's words floating in my mind:
Ship before you're ready because you will never be ready.Â
Ready implies you know it's going to work, and you can't know that.Â
You should ship when you're prepared, when it's time to show your work,Â
but not a minute later.
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You might have experienced it yourself and fought with thoughts like:
I don't know enough.
I don't see clearly enough.Â
I don't believe enough (in this thing I made or in me)Â
It's not good enough.
It's not original enough.
All of these are thoughts not facts and remember...
If it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t count.Â
Think of all the beautiful artwork, the novels, the projects (professional or for fun) sitting in drawers all over the land! Dreams buried and money left on the table...
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I am going to empty my drawers of half-finished (or half-started!) projects so I can ship them as soon as they are ready. What about you? Do you have something to
ship?Â
