Farnam Street shared the following insight in their weekly blog:
“Waiting for perfect conditions is how otherwise intelligent people keep themselves stuck. Two entrepreneurs spot the same opportunity. One builds elaborate plans; the other tests crude prototypes. The planner is still planning when the tester sells their company. While you wait for perfect conditions, others are creating them.”
Perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand. While we are waiting for the perfect scenario to try something new, we end up falling behind.
Perfectionism is often attributed to risk-adverse people. They will spend countless hours making sure their plans are perfect before enacting them. This is great for nuclear scientists, but not so good for fields where you have to be quick on your feet, like ranching. By the time the perfect conditions come around, the opportunity has most often passed.
Trying things on a smaller scale often helps counter the perfectionist mindset. Instead of going all-in with the perfect plan that could take a year or two to implement, try breaking things down into smaller increments that can be enacted immediately. This enables the development of a feedback loop where experiments can be improved and adapted to specific conditions and your skill set.
Take adaptive grazing, for example. Instead of applying this practice to the whole herd, try using a smaller bunch of cattle, like your replacement heifers. The skills and knowledge you learn from applying this method on a smaller scale can be adapted and used to incorporate more cattle the next year. Yes, the benefits are smaller, but so are the risks.
In a similar way, maybe you aren’t convinced of the benefits of a new PCC™ bull just yet. Instead of swapping out all your bulls in the first year, maybe buy a couple to try on the heifers. As you collect more data and get more comfortable with your decision, you can add more bulls at a later date. We are positive that one calving season after using PCC bulls is all it will take to convince you!
Don’t get bogged down in the details. Waiting for the perfect conditions is not a winning strategy. Some progress is better than no progress.
Quote Worth Re-Quoting
“Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.” ~ William Arthur Ward