Press publish to exit the hamster wheel.
It is one of the things that matters more than almost anything else when you’re building something online.
If you don’t, nothing happens.
No one can find what you’ve made.
No one can click on it.
And no one can buy it.
The Productivity Trap
I was reminded of something while working on the Print-on-Demand project in the ExitLab.
Ideas are not the problem.
Getting ideas is easy.
Discipline is not really the problem either.
The real problem is the productivity trap.
It’s surprisingly easy to fool yourself into thinking that just because you’re busy, you’re making progress.
But that’s not always true.
You might adjust designs.
Test a new slogan.
Change colors on your website.
Read another guide about how to do something better.
All of that feels productive.
But none of it moves things forward.
Not until something is finished.
Something you can publish.
A good starting point for many people is turning their knowledge into a digital product they can put out into the world.
building More Than You Publish
I know this because I fall into that trap myself.
Quite often.
When I was building my first project in the ExitLab, I noticed something:
sometimes I build more than I publish.
And that’s a problem.
Because on the internet, nothing really exists until it goes live.
Finish Before You Press Publish
Before you can press publish and move closer to your exit, you have to finish what you’re working on.
It sounds obvious.
But that’s exactly where many projects stall.
So the process is pretty simple.
Step 1: Finish what you’re working on.
Step 2: Publish it.
Only then can anything start happening.
There is a third step as well.
Step 3: Tell people it exists.
Share it on social media.
Send it to an email list.
Run an ad.
But that’s a topic for another post.
Because none of that matters until you’ve done the first two steps.
The internet doesn’t reward ideas.
It rewards finished things.
Press publish — and move one step closer to your exit.