When you’re working on an idea, it’s tempting to wait until it’s nearing completion to get feedback. However, you may lock yourself out of ideas by waiting.
Photo by Michael Coghlan.
As writer Seth Godin explains, the very nature of waiting to get feedback means that all the decisions you make along the way can’t be questioned. You’re locked in because you’ve already put the work in and it would be too difficult to go back. This might mean you miss out on some alternative ideas:
If someone says, “can you review this slide deck?” there are a bunch of anchors already built in. Anchor: there are slides. Anchor: there are six slides. Anchor: the slides have text on them.
Before we can even have a conversation about whether or not there should even be a presentation, or whether the content is worth presenting, we’re already anchored into slides and text and length. The right feedback might be: Do a presentation, but no slides. It might be: Use 100 slides. But these things rarely come up because the entire discussion was anchored at the start.
If you’ve settled on your initial idea, all those little commitments along the way are OK. However, if you never sought input at the beginning of your project, you might waste some effort. Instead, seek feedback on your ideas early so you can avoid costly mistakes along the way.
Anchoring can sink you [Seth Godin]
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