More With Less

There is a very valuable skill that I’m working on sharpening: being able to do more with less.

A historic weakness of mine is that my ideas for how to improve something tend to be grand in scope. They often involve lots of time, effort, juice – and while they’re often good plans, they require so much up-front commitment as a result that they’re non-starters.

I’m terribly good, usually, at finding low-juice ways to make impacts. My biggest mental barrier is that I fall into the trap of measuring impact only by the potential results. “Plan A would only make X impact, but Plan B would make 3X impact! We should do Plan B!” But Plan B requires ten times the Juice – more effort, more time before the impact is realized, etc.

The good news: I’m getting better at it! Lately, I’ve initiated several low-juice projects with the potential for huge impacts. Some of those impacts are already starting to show! And those, in turn, make more juice. It’s a scale.

So, lesson learned (or at least, learning): don’t always look for the best thing you can do. Sometimes (often!), look for the thing that can make the most impact while costing as little as possible.