Stop Overthinking, Start Executing
January 4, 2013 
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This is probably the best and simplest advice I can offer you for 2013: stop overthinking, start executing. It’s not a new idea, I was pushing clients in this direction while as a consultant for the last decade prior to going in-house at Google.
It’s also how I treat my own web ventures. And I find the more I execute, the more revenue I make, the more my communities grow and the more fun I have.
My entire career I’ve witnessed marketers kill themselves with planning and strategy documents that never amount to anything, or ate into their precious hours of the day and left minimal time to try things and iterate.
Marketing has evolved and in reality none of us know how our ideas are going to play out in the wild. And this is a good thing, because instead of just doing one or two big things, you can organize your team in a way they can try out a lot of ideas of varying sizes, see what resonates and use data to refine. Fail fast and learn, tomorrow is a new day and you can always deliver value and achieve results if you have your finger on the pulse of your community and industry.
Have objectives. Have goals. Measure to conversion. But get people smart enough they innately know the paths to get there and are excited to move fast vs. simply talk about ideas.
It’s a constant process, one that requires data and industry-savvy team members you trust to run programs and own your brand. But a nimble team like this empowered with modern communications tools will run circles around larger teams who suffer from planning paralysis.
image credit: Shutterstock
Tammy replied | Jan 4, 2013 (5 comments)
What great advice! So often I find that I spend more time thinking about activities (dreading them) than it actually takes to do them. Once I get off the inertia wave of inaction and actually do it, I’m so relieved by the removal of the thorn in my side, with a minor kicking of myself for putting it off so long.
Jesse Kohl replied | Jan 4, 2013 (1 comment)
Absolutely awesome post. Of all the New Year resolutions and 2013 marketing predictions I’ve seen lately, this is one message that I will come back and read through the year.
tao of badass replied | Jan 5, 2013 (1 comment)
Overthinking can happen as a outcome of a conclusion that needs to be made, large-scale or little, and is typically exacerbated in stressful positions. It’s not restricted to conclusion making although, as it can also rear it’s unattractive head whenever certain thing has the proficiency to cause any grade of anxiety or worry. It’s the proverbial thing that “keeps you up at evening” and arises from an genuine or perceived lack of control over some facet of life. With a lack of control comes a feeling of helplessness. Overthinking is frequently the direct outcome. The worst overthinkers really spend time overthinking apparently meaningless things to the issue that they’ve expended more time conceiving about the thing than the time it would have taken to address it absolutely. What a waste of time and energy!
Jack Hadley replied | Jan 5, 2013 (4 comments)
As Seth Godin often says, “Ship!”.
Andrew Hanelly replied | Jan 7, 2013 (1 comment)
Adam – Love it when you get right to the heart of the matter like this. Great post to kick off another new year.
Nick Stamoulis replied | Jan 17, 2013 (30 comments)
Marketers typically overthink their content. Content marketing is essential. Not every piece needs to be groundbreaking. As long as it is providing target audience members with some value, that’s all that matters.
marketingowy replied | Feb 28, 2013 (1 comment)
I totally agree. We may plan and analyze everything over and over again, but we will be alway one step ahead when we just start doing it..
Ashlie replied | Mar 6, 2013 (1 comment)
I love this post. Overreacting leads to greater problems, especially in the workplace. I believe that you have to “do” to create. Just thinking about everything that needs put together or how much it is going to take to get done, it is better to just jump right in and do it. Set a goal and conquer it as opposed to sitting there thinking about it. The more you do the more you make!