Start Simple

Derek Sivers shared an important idea in this video of his. Particularly for those of us who are in the information technology (IT) line, more often than not, we are too indulged in  technology, in the bolts and nuts and on the technicalities to begin with. When we have an idea, be it a business idea or others, we plunged into thinking about the implementation straight away. You know, what programming language to use, what are the features and functionalities, whether to outsource etc.

Derek proposes that we start out simple, don't worry about the technology first. For him, he wanted to sell music albums online and his first version of the CD Baby website was done up in plain html. He manually scanned and uploaded the album artwork. Users who ordered CDs from his website will trigger an email to him. No complex shopping carts, payment systems, functions to upload albums etc. That helped to quickly turn his idea into reality and to give him real feedback from people who were actually using his website. He went on to improve the website bit by bit, adding automations along the way.

Start small and start quick - this helps to get around the huge initiation barrier to take action and get things moving. Once there are signs that the idea is working, then think about ways to build technology in to improve processes.

I believe this is how technology should be used - generally.