The B- Work

also done manually by a human being. There were a ton of Google spreadsheets, manual trackers, calculations, pretending to be this marvelous software that we were trying to build. So a lot of the functionality that the end user saw was not actually done by a computer. It was done by an actual human being because building software is expensive. You can't build all of it at once, but we wanted the user to see kind of like the final results.

So we had to do a lot of the manual things to make it happen. When we shipped the software, there were a lot of bugs and we had to fix it. There were some, walk arounds. That we had to do it was a mess if you look at it from the outside. If I were to grade the level of performance, it would have barely been a B minus word. It felt like building a car while driving it. And as an A plus student myself, who was taught that everything had to be perfect, this was difficult for me to process.

I loved having a good plan. I came from years of schooling with curriculums that had clearly defined assignments and deadlines for the next four months. Color coded calendars, a sense of control, but in a startup, you get none of that. And to be quite honest, I constantly felt like any minute a grown up will walk into this mess and punish us for all the mess that we've created.

Even though we weren't doing anything illegal, it felt like we were breaking some rules, but no one came, no one got punished. The company grew into a major player in health tech in North America and it's making a lot of money. It's a proper company now. Things are much different now. They have the capacity and time to better quality work. But I'll always remember how it was in the beginning, and this picture stuck with me through all these years.

I've had to carry this built with duct tape mentality through grad school, every job I've had ever since and the launch of my own projects and Even to this podcast and my blog and the YouTube channel I am trying to embrace this duct tape mentality that B minus work.

As a recovering perfectionist, shipping the B minus work is not easy. In contrast, my husband is much better at this. He fully embraces chat GPT in his work and benefits from the speed and progress that it allows him. I, on the other hand, remain stubborn and snobby about this whole AI thing. But, I'm slowly trying my best to get acquainted with it. In moments like this, when I'm being stubborn, when I'm being snobby, I ask myself, are you behaving like a successful startup?

Or like the federal government right now. And the reason why I'm asking this specific question is because I've worked in both. I worked in a successful startup and I worked for the federal government. And you couldn't find the two more opposite workplaces if you tried. In the federal government, everything was perfect, color coded, without typos. But nothing got done because everyone was busy perfecting the plan.

In a startup, no one had a plan because things changed quickly and people were busy actually shipping the product. And having experienced this, having worked in both workplaces, I would rather be on a tech startup side in my own life than, the federal government side. You can pick your own opposites in this question. Maybe you have experience working in a company that was very perfect, but.

Things didn't move quickly or something else, or maybe it's the family member that you're going to compare or a friend. Just pick the two opposites and ask this

question And one of the mantra that I like to tell myself is done first, improved later. Don't get me wrong, I admire businesses and people who produce high quality work. I would hate to live in a world without seeing examples of human excellence. That's the reason why I love going to Europe. You just walk on the street and everywhere you look you see examples of human excellence. I like, being a customer of a business that runs extremely well. I love seeing perfection.

I love consuming perfection. I love being surrounded by perfection. I love human excellence. However, I've learned to view human excellence as a ladder. The first few steps are always the B minus work. The top steps are the A plus work. And you can't get to the top without stepping on the first few steps that are shipping the B work. So, seeing this visual image of a letter is like, yes, I want to be excellent at this pursuit, but I can't get there without shipping some B work first.

And let me tell you, time constraints make implementing this whole idea of B minus work easier.

I shared one of my favorite podcast episodes in that blog post. I'll leave the links in the description so you can find that it's an interview with Brooke Castillo where she discusses personal productivity, time blocking, and the idea of B minus work. And one of the quotes that I love is that B minus work can change people's lives. Work that you don't produce at all does nothing in the world. And she has more brilliant nuggets like that in the interview.

and my reasoning for B minus work is that you want to ship B minus work because it gives you speed. You can get more done in a shorter amount of time. And by actually shipping the work of getting it. Like all the projects from beginning in process to done Completing this whole cycle that what builds skills Alternatively what ends up happening is that people become really good at starting or Putting things on their to do list It's like I want to write About this I want to launch this business.

I want to do that. More advanced crowd, they can be good at starting. Maybe you are good at building a website. Maybe you are good at creating the first draft. Maybe you are good at, talking to your friend about this idea and maybe finding a potential partner for this project. But that's where things end. because a lot of us quickly realized that there are some constraints and limitations and that we can't ship the A plus work. So we don't ship anything at all.

But I truly believe you have to complete this whole circle of starting, doing, editing, shipping. And the more cycles of this work you do, the better you become. That's how skills develop There are a lot of benefits at actually like the final stages of the product where you edit, where you ship, where you deal with all the mental chatter that happens. It's really important to do the other half.

of the project, even if it's B minus work, but still clicking the submit button, send, finish and move on. And it also gives you a sense of completion and a positive feedback loop. It's like, okay, I finished it and you have this burst of energy to do the next thing.

Having a limited amount of time to complete something is actually a good thing, to complete this whole circle. Try writing that article in 30 minutes, film that video in one hour, finish that assignment by the end of the day, apply for that grant before the weekend begins. I think time constraints are often necessary to actually hit that send, publish, submit button. So, don't be afraid of the deadline. If you don't have one, create one for yourself.

finish recording and celebrating shipping yet another episode that could have been better, could have been an A plus some ideal world, but I don't have all the time in the world and I want it shipped. Have a good week everyone. Talk to you next time.