Do hard things

I have noticed a disturbing trend in people working hard to find the easiest way to get a job done. My problem is not with a desire for efficiency, it's with pushing to make a marginal solution. The question becomes "What is the bare minimum I could do and still get credit for doing something?" or "What is the smallest feature set we can give the client to get them off our backs?". Instead the question needs to be "How can we knock their socks off and still deliver on time?"

In reality, if we are not striving to do the best and taking opportunity to surprise clients by going beyond what they expected, we are just plodding along punching a clock and collecting a paycheck. Not very inspiring. What excites people is knowing they are building something great, something that matters. The only way to do that is by doing something hard.

One of our engineers spent much of last weekend solving a hard problem. We had decided we could compromise the solution to get it done in time and it would still work OK for most people. None of us were proud of that choice, but what else could we do? By spending his own time, this engineer was able to solve the hard problem and deliver a feature that we can be proud of.

What are you most proud of? I'll bet it is the things that you worked hard to accomplish. If you find yourself trying to figure out how to get out of doing something hard, you may still get a paycheck but you are robbing yourself of the greatest prize - knowing you accomplished something that matters. Don't shy away from the challenges. Hit them head on.

Do hard things.