Would you rather be thought of as smart or a hard worker? Your ego may prefer the former, but you may ultimately be more successful if you’re praised for the latter.

There have been a cluster of studies lately about the types of praise that children receive and the impact it has on how much they challenge themselves and how diligently they apply themselves. I’m not sure if adults have been studied in the same way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same lessons apply.

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Sometimes I feel like a broken record. Certain themes - something is better than nothing, you are not your user, always be asking questions, action drives more action - find their way into most things I write. At the king of that hill is “it’s all about execution”.

The blunter way of putting it is, no one cares about your great ideas. Because as long as they just sit there, good ideas aren’t any better than bad ideas or silly ideas or ridiculous ideas or insulting ideas.

Free Ideas. Just Add Execution. (Laserlike)

Share your ideas. Doing so will make you feel like you need to go do them, because of the small risk that someone will take your idea now that it’s “out there” and beat you to it. Sharing your idea will expose you to diverse feedback on it. Your idea will get pressure tested.

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I love Getting Things Done. Some of the cornerstones (like maintaining an empty inbox, for example) are a little too hard-core for me, but mostly it’s a philosophy that’s contagious in a good way.

One of my favorite former coworkers, a lead engineer, was also a fan of GTD. We always had a series of little tasks for each other - not fire-fighting emergency things, but “when you get a chance” items.  In order to not lose those items, we each had an online ta-da list that the other one could add things to.

Ta-da Lists are fast and easy - you get your own URL where you can create as many lists as you want (and yes, give permission for others to add items to your list). I maintain short-term lists while I’m in the midst of projects and an odds-and-ends list for home and one for work. The odds-and-ends lists are critical so you’re always one click away from remembering what useful thing you can do in that extra five minutes.

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A roundup of good articles inclining you towards action:

Plan for the present and likely future (Ask a Good Product Manager)

A “good enough” solution might perform well for several months or years; unfortunately, those looking for the “perfect” answer will reject what is “good enough” and insist on a solution that is usually more complicated, more complex, and more expensive.

Not only is perfectionism risky and expensive, it’s an effective silencer of communication. As the bar for ideas gets higher, fewer junior product managers or engineers or QA folks feel empowered to contribute and lots of potentially “good enough” ideas go unheard.

“Analysis paralysis” and “utopia myopia” (On Product Management)

We all know that “analysis paralysis” is the state where one cannot make a decision because they get stuck trying to figure out all the possibilities…On the other end of the scale are those situations where a decision is made by someone with little or no debate, research or analysis…

Utopia myopia - I sincerely hope that phrase catches on, by the way - usually comes from either over-relying on domain expertise or feeling that analysis has to be all-or-nothing. Often the best tactic is to temporarily throw out the big goals and start with “what thing, no matter how tiny, can we learn/question?”

Set your priorities (Joel on Software)

So if you want to get things done, you positively have to understand at any given point in time what is the most important thing to get done right now and if you’re not doing it, you’re not making progress at the fastest possible rate.

Joel’s team used a variant on ordinal prioritization, giving team members a set amount of currency and allowing them to allocate it towards “buying” features.