Minimum Viable Action: The Simple Answer to Perfectionism

I’m not going to mince words. I despise corporate culture. I find it vapid, hollow, inauthentic and, at its core, duplicitous. If I hear the words synergy, alignment or agility again, I might throw up. Yet, I’m of the mind that wisdom can be found anywhere, and I have to say I’ve found some in working at start-ups over the last 5 years.

Many start-ups use a strategy known as “Minimum Viable Product” or “MVP”, and this is how it works.

Let’s imagine you’re trying to roll out a new product on to the market, let’s call it a piece of software. If you didn’t know any better, you might think the best approach is to work to build a fully-fledged product, launch it to market, and that’s it. However, with the Minimum Viable Product approach, a Product team will develop a “barebones” version of a product. The purpose of this product is to be the minimum viable version of the platform. That is, it's the simplest, “just good enough” version of the product to be rolled out to market.

From here, the teams will iterate and test as they go. Customers will give feedback, and the team will improve the product over time. What this means is that product teams can roll out products and features out much faster, get real world information as the system breaks, and evolve it at speed. The process doesn’t always look pretty. Teams plan on things breaking, sometimes catastrophically. The platform or product doesn’t look perfect or honed when they first start. But the process allows the shortest amount of time between action, feedback on the action and iteration. Rather than waiting to build an entire product from scratch, teams can make micro-steps and micro-adjustments on the journey.

In my reflections, I’ve realised that we can apply this to our lives too. Introducing “Minimum Viable Action”. Much of paralysis by analysis operates under the notion of requiring a perfect plan prior to proceeding. Many productivity gurus would gladly sell you a new system or journal that will finally be the unlock for you to be productive. I’m afraid to tell you, but your life will never be a perfectly tuned, well-oiled machine. There will always be “black swans” and there will always be chaos. You will never be able to hedge against the overwhelmingly unpredictable nature of life.

Minimum Viable Action is a possible antidote, and it works like this. Suppose you have a project or a goal of some sort. Your “Mininum Viable Action” would be the smallest unit of effort that you can honestly apply, that would shift the needle on your progress. If you’re looking to get into shape, your Minimum Viable Action would be a single workout. Just one. You could consider a single rep of one exercise in the gym as progress if you’ve never trained, and I will absolutely grant that. However, we also have to be honest that this wouldn’t really be considered a “viable” action. It doesn’t move the needle much, and there’s not much to iterate on if you just do a single push-up. A single rep is like a single line of code in a piece of software — it’s a start, but not much on its own.

A full workout, however ugly, messy and unrefined it may be, is still a basis to iterate from. Much like releasing a piece of software, your first work-out would be the version 0.1. Almost an alpha or beta test. Full of bugs, not pretty, not honed. After 3 to 6 months, maybe you’ll reach your first proper polished version 1.0 of a workout. After 5 years, you’re on a version 5.0. Compare the first versions of iPhones, Windows or macOS to the current versions. They sucked compared to what we have now. But through the same process of iteration and “updates” to your life, methods and process, you can steadily improve your life.

The Minimum Viable Action takes some of the pressure off of progress. You’re not looking for perfect workouts, or even perfect consistency. What you’re looking for is “good enough”. Any action that is good enough to constitute the smallest unit of progress that can build momentum.

This may seem counter to the pursuit of excellence and conscientiousness, since you’re not pushing to the fringes of your ability and potential. This is somewhat true. However, if you’re trapped in paralysis by analysis, the main thing you need is to move to action. Any action.

Three resistance training workouts per week, done most weeks of the year (not even every single week), completed with moderate intensity will get you ahead of 95%+ of the population. So “good enough” can get you a long way. I’m confident if you can reach good enough with some level of consistency, you can push to greatness in time.

If you have been following me long enough, you will realise a trend. I’m a fan of broad principles over narrow tactics and “hacks”. Principles are robust, tactics are fragile. You can apply the Minimum Viable Action to any pursuit, goal or mode of skill acquisition. A single one-hour session, deeply engaged in learning a language, a new skill or new knowledge, applied even a few times a week will compound. A 20 minute walk. 10 pages of a new book. These all work. Apply this broadly and you will learn the most important skill — that of being able to take action under any circumstance.

Good luck.