The current popular heuristic is, “Just ship it.” It leans towards a bias for action, giving people permission to ship something regardless of whether they think they are ready or not. Reid Hoffman’s popular saying goes, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” (I’ll never forget Kitze’s wistful reminiscence, and wish that he had just shipped it.)

I’ve always appreciated this as a meme and general philosophy, but there are definite exceptions to the case. I think there’s a better way of phrasing it, like a contemporary version of, “Aim high, but make sure you shoot.” Here are six heuristics that I like to think about when releasing work:

1. Mostly, you should ship acceptable work. You define what is acceptable and what quality means to you. If it’s not acceptable yet, it’s not ready to ship yet. People will remember your work by its details. From shipping a lot of acceptable work, something great—even perfect—will eventually emerge. As Ray Bradbury writes, “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” 

2. Know what you want to accomplish by releasing this work. Are you trying to build a sustainable business? Vet a product idea? Or just express something that you’ve wanted to get off your chest for a while? Are you starting on a process and publicly documenting it, or are you completing a process and publicly declaring something? Will releasing your work prematurely help you accomplish your goal, or will it be a waste of effort?

3. If you want to get results (like money or recognition) with your work, releasing it is really only good for two reasons: you can learn something important quickly and improve on your work, or your work is at a point where it’ll impress and delight people. In a world of speed where everyone is just shipping fast, low-quality, things, the returns on high quality are greater than ever.

4. If you’re first starting out and making early work, or getting back into the groove of things, it’s okay if some of that turns out badly; that’s usually how you get to understand what good work is. You can make something for practice, and it doesn’t mean you need to ship it publicly (see author Aaron Thier on his practice novel). You can complete a version of the work (perhaps a draft, demo, or sketch), and show it to one or two other people.

5. How much time have you been putting effort into your work? If it’s been years, are you okay with the project’s scope and expectations expanding so drastically that it’ll likely never get released (turning into a version of Jodorowsky’s Dune, or Dr. Dre’s Detox)? Or are you okay combining grandeur with reality and committing to releasing the work, even if it falls short of your expectations?

6. In most cases, the benefits to shipping outweigh the benefits to not shipping. Do you have a release date? If you do, what’s the benefit to not shipping until then?
If you liked this, check out my book on making creative work, Creative Doing!