I have ambition. I want to do good and useful things. I want to do these things with some measure of scale. That could be considered thinking and dreaming big. Thinking big probably gets me in trouble more than it helps me. Thinking small has worked for many people before me, and I could receive the same benefits it has given others.
Many big things grow from small things. We are surrounded by big awesome things that started off far more modestly. In many of those cases it is questionable whether the people that started those things had any idea about how big things would get. Hardcore History might be the best podcast in the world. It is currently a series of 3-5 hour epic episodes talking about history. Some of these are multiparters, so you may get 20 hours of audio on one subject. The first episode of Hardcore History was only 17 minutes and a single part. I suspect the host Dan Carlin had no idea what his podcast would grow into. If he had started with the current format in mind, would he have even began in the first place? I think about the origins of Hardcore History a lot as I set forth with my own creative projects.
In moments of arrogance I forget that like Dan Carlin I can start small. If something so creative and awesome can start super small, then my projects can have similar paths. Starting small and thinking small in scope has benefits and I forget them. I forget that when things are small you can experiment and tinker. I spent 2 years working on my last software project, in the end I got to the point with it, that I couldn’t even make beneficial changes without huge efforts. The code base had gotten huge and had too much “baggage.” Given less scope, I might have been able to make a real business out of the project, instead it died a painful death. Being able to experiment is not the only benefit to thinking small though.
Small is a lot faster.
Small is cheap.
Small takes a lot fewer mental resources.
Thinking small may not actually be thinking as small as it appears. I think the chief benefit of thinking small is that it lets you do more things. I become paralyzed far too often by the scope of the things I want to accomplish. This makes it hard to get things off the ground. I have spent the last year writing a book, that no one has seen yet. I might have spent a whole year working on a book that no one may be all that into. I went big with this project, and it is by its nature going to take a while to get out in the open. Not every project needs to be that way. A smaller project might have allowed me to already be making money. Going small with a project would have just allowed me to do more faster. So sometimes we are forced to go big, sometimes we can go small.
I think that is the key, to go big and small. If I go only one direction I get in trouble. I am content to work in isolation on things for a long time. I can do the big project mentality. It does create a sense of dread though with new projects. I assume all projects will become huge, consuming, and a stressor. Feeling the weight of this impending size can make things hard to start. Things do not have to be that way. Sometimes small is good.
I feel the pull towards doing a lot more small things. In fact as I plan the next year I am looking at doing man more small things. I might pick up a big project or two but the big stuff is not going to take over the small stuff. My hope is that doing some smaller projects will let grow some creativity and playfulness. The big idea is that I just need to remember its cool to start small and maybe someday I’ll stumble my way into having a really big thing on my hands like Hardcore History.