Shipping slow as an unfair advantage
Ship fast, they say. What if you ship slow instead?
When everyone else ships fast and you can only ship slow, what can you do to maximize slow shipping to your unfair advantage?
Asking, because that’s my situation right now. In fact, for the past few years, a consequence of consulting, child care and working from home.
So yeah, say I accept and embrace the fact that that I will not be able to ship as fast as I want to. What gives? What’s next?
How can I use shipping slow to my advantage instead?
Time-starved = more focus. Good thing about lacking time is that it gives focus. And being on both sides before, I can definitely feel the difference. When I have an abundance of time, I tend to get distracted, make mistakes, work on stuff that don’t move the needle. When I’m time-starved, focus increases in proportion to how lacking in time I am. I get more motivated at prioritization, being more selective at what to ship, and more selectively incompetent in things that I would normally waste time grinding at. I get to be more intentional.
Choose the right game. Build products that benefit from small, consistent effort over time, versus something that needs one big intense push, or virality. Maybe a product that mainly gets customers from SEO, which takes times to gain traction. Or products that doesn’t bank on hype, the fad of the season or is rapidly evolving (erhem… AI). Yes, if you ship slow, building AI wrappers will probably be a bad idea.
Building relationships slowly. I like this part the most. I get to build relationships slowly. Get to know people in the space, help the community, know my customers deeply, over time. You become a familiar face, a familiar brand. People’s impressions can’t be rushed. If you’re trying to close a sale as quickly as you can, it might come across as self-promotional, transactional and just trying to extract value.
Running your own race. I also found constant reminders to self to run my own race to to be helpful. In fact, it’s a nice mental model for everyone to have I feel. Spending this much time on X tends to make one compare. You see others shipping fast and winning, and you feel like you got to do the same too to win. It’s unnecessary stress. And a thief of joy. So by accepting slow shipping, I’m automatically out of the race. I’m on my own path. It is what it is, what I have, cards I am dealt with. I make the best out of my own life stage and situation. Maybe joyfulness along the journey, is easier then.
What other unfair advantages are there to shipping slow?