"Move fast and make things!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
It's long been the key phrase of Silicon Valley - 'move fast and break things' - the entire thinking being that in the race to build a new market and dominate within it, speed is of the essence and that it is ok to see a few things go wrong along the way. There's a lot of debate as to whether that is a worthwhile strategy or not, and I won't go into that here.
I've certainly used derivatives of the phrase around here before, suggesting it in the context of fast-moving trends and ideas - you should 'move fast and chase things!'
Or the idea that you should "move fast and fix things,' as an antidote to the whole 'move fast and break things' mantra.
Or that simply the idea of 'moving fast' will help your creativity engine.
But what if you simply move fast and do things? What if you simply set out to do something and get it done, rather than seeing it exist in a state of perpetual implementation and development? What if you started a project and simply finished it? What if you had momentum but didn't let it peter out - but saw an initiative through to completion? You can have an idea, but if you don't implement it, it's a failed idea.
And so that's what I did this weekend with the creation of a new Website for this Daily Inspiration series which can be found at https://daily.jimcarroll.com. I moved fast and made a thing.
It's a new location for my Daily Inspiration post (the one you are reading right now) that allows people to easily and simply sign up to receive the post each day via email. Many already do this, having subscribed via the page on my Website where the post goes every day at https://inspiration.jimcarroll.com
So why another new location in addition to my existing one? There's a bit of a backstory to that - right now, when I send out the Daily, it goes to my blog, and then to the people who've signed up for my mailing list via my Website. It also goes into a LinkedIn Newsletter, which goes on my LinkedIn site as well as being emailed to a vast number of people. It then goes to various social media networks - my personal and business Facebook pages, Instagram, Flickr, Mastodon, and Threads. (It also used to go to Twitter but like many people, I stopped posting and engaging there over a year ago when I found I could not agree with the mindset of the new owner (as did many others.)
The post then also goes to two online publishing services dedicated to writers - Medium and Substack. These were established some years back as a place where those who write and share newsletters could easily publish them, and often get renumerated for their work. Both are home to tens of thousands of writers, and you can find newsletters on a vast range of topics - perhaps you subscribe to a few already. And so each day, my Daily Inspiration post also goes to these two sites, is sent out via email, and also becomes a part of my presence on that site.
It's quite the process early in the morning as I get each Daily post out to each of these locations - but I'm reaching a pretty vast audience.
Here's what led to my new home. In the last few weeks, over on Substack an angry battle is raging, all having to do with 'free speech' and concepts related to publishing. I won't get into the gory details here - you can look it up online - but suffice it to say, I've seen many people whom I deeply respect decide to leave the platform, simply because they can't agree with the views of the leadership team. It is all unfolding in a way that is very similar to what happened with Twitter over a year ago, and so I've decided to leave that platform.
Early on the weekend, I saw one individual who I follow note that she had decided to leave Substack, and had created a new home that she 'self-hosts' on a publishing platform called Ghost. That caught my interest - and so I spent some time off and on in the last few days doing the same thing. (We weren't skiing this weekend because, well, the weather wasn't great.) The result was that I 'moved fast' and made a 'thing' - my new self-publishing site -which you can now find at https://daily.jimcarroll.com. The process was somewhat technical (or deeply technical depending on your skill level) and was mostly guided by a document I found at one of my main service providers, Runcloud. The result? Out there in the cloud somewhere exists a new little server that costs $10 a month and does nothing but offer people another way to sign up for my Daily, and access thousand+ previous posts. To me, that's a useful investment, and I'm already seeing results as new audiences discover my work.
The newsletter will still be going out via all the other regular channels that I post it to - it's just that this becomes another new vehicle by which I can distribute it and share it, draw attention to it. It also gives me a new fun little project to work on, in which I can continue to explore the massive, complex world of online publishing. My mantra? Don't always just think of moving fast and breaking things - move fast and do things. Build things. Implement things. Create things.
It's the action and completion part of the process that is so critical.
That's it. And now, I've gotta go - and post this Daily to my blog, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, Medium, Flickr, Mastodon networks - and one more new location!
Futurist Jim Carroll began writing his Daily Inspiration post in August 2016 and is approaching post #2,000.