A key to being an attractive man is the ability to get things done.
Successful people figure out a way to “chunk” down their goals into small pieces and get into a routine of doing a little bit each day.
That’s Minimal Viable Progress (MVP).
MVP is a continuation of the Silicon Valley precept “Done is Better than Perfect”.
In other words, don’t waste time on things that are non-essential.
When you want to get something done, ask yourself, “What is the smallest amount of progress that will be useful to achieving my goal?”
Here’s an example. Let’s say you have to give a presentation at work.
Think of the smallest piece you can do each day to move the project along.
What’s the normal tendency?
To start out big and try to make a splash. But to do that, you have to build out a grand vision, which requires a ton of information to be compiled.
It’s too much.
And the enormity of your vision scares you.
So you avoid it – and wind up cramming just before it’s due.
Sound familiar?
In one of the most popular Harvard Business Review articles ever written, “One More Time: How do you Motivate Employees?”, author Frederick Herzberg concluded that the two top primary internal motivators for people were achievement and recognition for achievement.
Getting something done, no matter how small, motivates us to keep going.
MVP is the theory of “small wins” and if you can get in the habit of following an easy routine, you will have success with whatever you take on.
What would be the MVP approach to the presentation example above?
First, start right away.
If you have a month to prepare, start then.
Day one – write for 10 minutes – a free-flow stream of consciousness.
Day two – research your topic on the web for 10 minutes.
Day three – review what you’ve written – another 10 minutes – and tweak it.
And so on.
What kind of product do you think you’ll have after 30 days?
300 minutes of work, or five hours, of high-quality, well thought out concepts.
But here’s the thing – you’ll have way more than 300 minutes.
You started at 10 minutes a day but after a few days, you felt motivated by what you were accomplishing, so you started devoting more time to it each day.
Why?
Because it felt effortless.
Try the MVP approach the next time you want to set a big goal for yourself.
