altMBA - Ship It Journal
The Ship It Journal is a daily log that keeps you honest about whether you actually finished and sent your work, not just worked on it.
A short loop runs each day: ship it, name tomorrow's ship, name what's in the way. Once a week you step back and read the pattern.
Reach for this when…
- You're perpetually 'almost done' and nothing goes out the door.
- Perfectionism is quietly functioning as procrastination.
- You want a habit that surfaces resistance before it becomes an excuse.
How to run it
- Each day, write what you shipped - completed and sent into the world, treating shipping as the non-negotiable, not just working.
- Write what you are shipping tomorrow.
- Name what is getting in the way.
- Review the journal weekly for patterns of resistance and completion.
A worked example
Situation. Somchai Boonmee ran a small illustration studio in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and had been finishing the same client portfolio redesign for four months.
Applied. He started the daily journal. The first week's entries repeated the same line reworded: shipping tomorrow, the portfolio. Writing it every day made the avoidance impossible to miss.
Result. On day nine he shipped a rough version instead of the perfect one. The client gave notes within a day, and the site went live inside the fortnight.
The catch
The journal only works if 'shipped' is defined honestly - a draft sitting in a folder isn't shipped, and it's easy to redefine the word to feel better about a slow week. It also assumes daily output is realistic, which doesn't fit every kind of work.
If you're editing the definition of 'shipped' more than you're shipping, that's the entry worth reading twice.
Origin: Seth Godin