Seth Godin’s post ‘Low & Slow (vs. fear)‘ touched me because of his comparison with many of our creative endeavours with bread-making: it requires ferment and lots of time. Entrepreneurship requires time and can’t be rushed through.
“Much of the work we do as creators, as leaders, as people seeking to make change–it needs to ferment, to create character and tension and impact. And if we rush it, we get nothing worth very much.”
But the interesting part of the post is also about the flipside, related to procrastination: “Sometimes, we mistakenly believe that we’re building something that takes time, but what we’re actually doing is hiding. We stall and digress and cause distractions, not because the work needs us to, but because we’re afraid to ship”
He concludes: “Impatience can be a virtue if it causes us to leap through the fear that holds us back.” And at the same time we should be patient and let our endeavors ferment to deliver the best quality. That may be the most difficult contradiction of entrepreneurship.
