Iteration of Ideas + Consistency in Habits and Processes = Success
When developing a new business - the product or service is important, but the execution is more important.
In Adam Grant's book, Originals, the importance of iteration is defined. We can and will have lots of terrible ideas when we start something, and it's good. The volume of ideas creates variety and sparks innovation. In fact, 200 ideas are typically needed before you can get to a place of originality with your idea. The process of iterating refines you and creates room to be methodical in your approach, while agile when you need to be.
James Clear wrote this great piece on the art of doing things consistently, quoted here.
It’s Not the Work, It’s the Re-Work
It is the revision that matters most.
They are so busy jumping from line to line in the hopes of finding a route nobody has ridden before that they don’t invest the time to re-work their old ideas. And this, as The Helsinki Bus Station Theory makes clear, is the key to producing something unique and wonderful.
By staying on the bus, you give yourself time to re-work and revise until you produce something unique, inspiring, and great. It’s only by staying on board that mastery reveals itself. Show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way and every now and then genius will reveal itself.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers popularized The 10,000 Hour Rule, which states that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert in a particular field. I think what we often miss is that deliberate practice is revision. If you’re not paying close enough attention to revise, then you’re not being deliberate.
A lot of people put in 10,000 hours. Very few people put in 10,000 hours of revision. The only way to do that is to stay on the bus.
Link to full blog post here: http://jamesclear.com/stay-on-the-bus