I woke up in Nicaragua this morning after a long travel mission via London & Houston. Can't tell you how nice it is to feel the warm tropical air on my skin! I've got a stack of work to do this morning (although planning to sneak in a couple of swims in the hotel pool to wash off any pending jetlag) and then I'm off to the coast.
Super excited for the week ahead - a gathering of 24 social entrepreneurs from around the world to explore purpose-driven leadership, social impact & innovation. Yahoo - I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of fun :)
But I want to zip back to last weekend for a moment and tell you about a big lesson I learned (the hard way, of course, haha).
I'd had a super busy week and knew that this trip was coming up and that I was going to be unplugging somewhat whilst I was here. The pressure was on to get a whole bunch of work done before getting on the plane. There's been a task sitting on my to-do list for a verrrrrry long time that I just couldn't seem to start. A new web build. For me.
You know how you feel when you look back at photos of yourself from a few years back.... and you see an outfit that you were wearing and think 'oh my god, what was I thinking ?!' (but at the time you thought it was the best thing ever). Yep, well that's how I was feeling about my website. I'd outgrown it. It was no longer a true representation of who I am or the work I do.
In fact, it has gotten to the point where I would have rather taken it down and not had a website at all than had that one sitting up there for all to see.
But building a new site takes time, and requires a certain type of focus and clarity that is hard to find when you're juggling a zillion to-do lists. So it became this ridiculous task that moved from one list to the next. Until last weekend.
I blocked out Saturday and told myself I'd build a super basic new version in a day - done & dusted. Nothing special, no need for any crazy functionality, but just a simple reflection of my work and how I show up in the world. To be honest, when I sat down to start it, I was kinda excited. A whole day lay ahead of me with one single task to complete. It's pretty rare for me to have a day with zero calls or distractions, so I assumed it would be a pretty simple flow-like day.
Haha - Cut to 4 hours later when I'm sitting at my desk, looking at this new site and questioning everything. I'd told myself that because it was just going to be a one-pager that I could use some of the elements of the old site to make it easier. So there I was looking at this site that was a mishmash of who I used to be and what I am today.
It was a website, and it did everything I needed it to do. But something wasn't right. Something in me was resisting using the old logo and some of the old wording.
A friend of mine popped round just as I was grabbing some lunch and I showed it to him. His face said it all. Ugh - it was nothing new. Just a re-hashed version of what I had before.
I messaged Lucy (mastermind buddy extraordinaire) Help! I've just spent half a day building something I hate.
She pinged me back... Wanna chat? She told me to step away from my laptop and just leave it for another day. I whined like a bratty little kid 'but there isn't another day! And if I walk away now I've just completely wasted the day'
Lucy: Ok then, so why don't you just scrap it completely and start again?
Gulp. I've got to admit, the idea of scrapping it all felt kinda nice. I looked at the screen again and felt a hell yes - get rid of it. So I did. And I started again, giving myself permission to throw away the mornings' work and start fresh.
I built the new site in 3 hours and I love it. Is it fancy? No. Is it finished? Hell no. But is it a true reflection of who I am? Absolutely. I look at it now and think, yep, I'm proud of this work I'm doing.
Here's the thing: It turns out throwing it all away was the very best thing I could have done. No amount of tweaks or edits would have fixed the other site, but my inner productivity monster was seriously resisting throwing away a mornings work.
So that's my lesson - Be willing to scrap everything and start fresh. If there's a niggling voice in your head (or in my case, my gut) saying ugh I don't like this, then listen to it. Because life is too short to semi-like stuff you're producing.