When in doubt, for a moment stop.

I was not good at woodwork at school. I have no idea why this was the case - I am pretty good with my hands, and have even managed to make my own dining room table (still standing after 6 years of hard use). For some reason though, I was always trying to make the thing I was suppose to make, rather than the thing I wanted to make.

Anyway, for all my anguish in woodwork class my teacher did leave me with one pearl of wisdom. He told us students that if, while we were cutting a piece of wood with a saw or plane or chisel, we got a hunch or were worried that we were going off course, that we should tell our hand to stop straight away, and if it failed to listen to us, to take our other hand and force it to stop.

With woodwork, once the wood is cut away it is very difficult to get back into place. Taking a moment to assess the situation before proceeding is the best way to minimise damage.

I am a big fan of the lean way of working - test and learn, progress in small steps with a tight feedback loop, experiment. I am not writing to counter this wisdom.

I am writing to say that sometimes the best course of action is to stop experimenting, to stop testing and progressing, and to pause. Remove as much sound as possible from our environment. Remove all distractions. Make a cup of tea. Sit down. And allow ourselves a moment to come back to earth and remember what it is we actually care about.

Today is one of those days for me. There are so many things I think I need to be doing, and I seem to be doing none of them. Time to stop trying to do any of them. Time to sit and allow myself to calm down.

Giving in to the delay

I have been trying to get a breath mint business off the ground, and it is taking so much longer than I want it to. I think this is generally the way of new businesses, new projects, new ventures. They always take longer than we think, even when we take that into account.

I have had a suspicion though that the short terms delays in getting the business started are going to mean the business will be better crafted and formed in its early stages, giving it a much better chance of producing something useful, and having a long life.

The key thing we are trying to sort out at the moment is the structure of the company, and the split of equity between the founders. This is something we have been almost discussing for about four months, but with something always getting in the way.

Today one of my co-founders called to talk about the business structure, and without me even prompting clarified two of the key questions that had been concerning me. It seems to me that the delays in forming the business have actually given us all time to work out what this thing we are creating needs to look like. 

Deep down I knew that it was time to wait, time to allow some key things to fall into place. But there was a narrative in my head saying that I needed to push and force, and I was getting so frustrated with the lack of progress. But I think if I had have got my impatient way, I may have created something brittle and inferior that would not have lasted.

Did I say too much?

Yesterday I travelled to the manufacturer who is going to develop and produce my breath mints. I made a decision as I got out of the car to tell him about the reason I wanted to make this mint. And I have been regretting it ever since.

I think that piece of information was one of my pieces of Intellectual Property, and I have just put it into the hands of somebody who could use it for his own purposes, cutting me out of the equation.

I wanted to tell him so that he knew the context as he started to formulate the product - I thought it could help him to develop a better product. I also wanted to tell him so that there were no secrets between us - a building of trust. 

Now though, I think I could have accomplished this and protected myself as well. I feel vulnerable and like I may have blown it. It will come down to how trustworthy this person is. I suppose in the end I only want to do business with trustworthy people, and the sooner I find out his character the better. Even if it means losing this whole business opportunity.

Given the same circumstance again I would not have said what I said. But I will take the positives out of whatever the outcomes of me doing so are.