Two phrases have been rolling around in my head this week:

Launch when you are not ready

and

Choose what you want to do and build your life around it

The first one speaks to my perfectionism tendencies as well as the imposter. The second touches on priorities and time.

Launching doesn’t need to mean a huge marketing campaign or fanfare. But launching does mean engaging with others saying ‘here I made this, what do you think?” We can do the endless tweaking beforehand, frankly it’s likely the endless tweaking that is likely holding you back from launching. And yet, we also know that once we launch, more tweaking will happen as we get feedback from those we seek to serve.

I don’t know how to fit this in. How do I carve out time for this? These questions often get asked in my personal life or when talking about change. We look at everything we are already doing and try to fit it in. The other approach is to choose what is essential (i.e. the big ‘rocks’) and then fit the rest of our lives or the project around those. (H/T Seth Godin)

I find both particularly relevant when thinking about using digital in our civil society and humanitarian organisations. Not because I think experimenting with the vulnerable is a good idea; not at all. But rather, because technology is changing all the time, we need responsible data policies, standards, thinking, guidelines, etc. in our organisations. There are many great resources out there already. We don’t need to wait till it is all perfect; it will never be perfect. And in some ways that’s good because it provokes the conversation. But we do need to ‘make’ time. And yes, we are already busy, too busy, so we need to decide if it is something essential and fit the rest of our work around.

It’s not easy, but the choice is up to us.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale