We were talking around the lunch table at work last week and it was decided that a number of us need to write more. I figured it would be motivation if for every week you didn’t write you had to donate $2 to charity.

I am a tools guy, that is to say I think the tool you use has a significant effect on the end product. So I sometimes build my own tools, and this was no exception. In this case I built Writers Blok. I started on it on Friday night and was done by Sunday.

However, Saturday night I was further away from being finished than when I started. I was trying to build something much more complicated than I needed. It is a common trap we all get into. Seth Godin says something in our "lizard brain" keeps us from wanting to complete a task.

He's right. The more I played with a "feature" the eight people that would ever see the site don't care about, the safer I was. I didn't have to launch anything, to hear possible criticism to have to fix possible bugs.

In a previous episode, I mentioned the book Rework. In that book, the authors mention that when they launched Basecamp, their first and flagship product, they had no way to accept payments. How could they launch a product with no way of being payed for it? 

When you sign up for a Basecamp account you get a free 30 day trial. They figured they could add the payment system in before that 30 days was up, so they focused on other things.

If you launched a fee supported application with no way to collect fees you would be scoffed at today, but you need not be. Until you have a customer you don't need to collect fees and until you have about ten you don't need to automate it.

It is a struggle for me, but I feel like on Writers Blok, I've practiced what I preach: I built something quickly that has only the stuff it needs for today. If 100 people sign up tomorrow, I'll be spending some time over this weekend to upgrade. Better that then spending time this weekend to launch the "perfect" version and loose momentum.