It’s a mistake I’ve made more times than I care to admit.
As you get to the end of a project, ready to tie up a last few loose ends, instead of a smooth slope down to the finish line, you see another (bigger) mountain.
Your model has great accuracy, but where is it going to get the data from in production?
Your app works perfectly, but why isn't anyone trying it?
Your design is flawless, but who has the bandwidth to help you build it?
If you had known that mountain was there, you would've planned differently.
So why didn't you?
In a fast-changing field like biotech, many of the projects we do are the first of their kind, at least for the folks doing them.
They're risky too.
We want so badly for the cost/benefit to work out in our favor, we don’t always look for the hidden costs.
It’s not intentional - it’s a habit. Subconscious.
To counteract this, we need to be intentional and deliberate about looking for the bigger mountains behind the smaller ones.
And here’s the mantra to get you started:
“It can’t be this easy, what am I missing?”
If you start asking that more often - and honestly looking for an answer - you may end up starting fewer projects.
But you’ll start finishing more.