The other day, as Nick and I were discussing how to go about distributing a new book through brick and mortar outlets, a big question popped up for me. The question was “do it now, or do it right?” For some time, I’ve figured that a couple of key elements of succeeding at a task were:

1. Don’t diddle around and make up excuses to delay simply DOING it; and
2. Do a little research to avoid re-inventing the wheel, and do it WELL.

We were applying our usual rigorous process to organizing a sales strategy, including basics like defining areas to rep, basic terms, and even some inventive ideas for point of sale displays. Somewhere in the midst of researching items to create the point of sale displays, it hit me. Were we overdoing it? Were we trying to do it TOO well, when we didn’t really have the resources? Were our great ideas simply getting in the way of doing what we needed to do in a simpler fashion?

So that’s one of my goals for the near future. To develop a system for assessing the question of “do it now, or do it right?” This is a peculiar area, because while the problem of perfectionism getting in the way of results is familiar, and although I find it easy to identify this happening with others, I don’t feel like I have a good system for assessing this in my own work.