Having a Vision is important.
Last month I spoke to over a hundred young developers, designers and entrepreneurs at Teen Web Conference, in my talk I told them that in my opinion business plans are inherently stupid. They keep you stuck on a path, when most growth is completely unpredictable and that in the earliest days your company will change so much the product vision will be unrecognisable by launch. In many ways they go against The Lean Startup methodology.
One point I didn’t mention is that there’s nothing wrong with having a vision. In fact It’s a good thing to have. Of course, the chances your company will play out in the direction you thought it would are slim but regardless It’s good to know what direction you want to head in.
Most importantly because if you have a long term goal, you’ll find the shorter term goals easier to stomach. Human’s are terrible at long term rewards. It’s why we procrastinate and want to open our presents on Christmas Eve.
If you can break down your journey into short term goals you’ll get more done. This is something I’ve started doing recently and found much success from. Using my favorite notation application (Notational Velocity), I list what I want to achieve in the next week and break it down into days.
From this I’m able to take on each concise point until by the end of the week I’ve completed my goals and more. If you’re able to work without such constraints good luck but I sadly tend to get bogged down after a while of trying to take on multiple problems within one project.
