OrganizationalAGAdam Grant 2-min read 15-min action

The Shitty First Draft Validation

Decouple generation from evaluation by producing three deliberately rough versions.

The concept

Progress over perfection

Creators stall because they judge raw early-stage work against their refined late-stage taste. Decouple generation from evaluation to break the stall.

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Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Chapter 4: Fools Rush In

By Adam GrantView source

Get reminded to actually run this

Pivots only work when you use them. Send me a gentle nudge:

Pivot pairs

Curated cross-disciplinary pairings that strengthen this one.

The Story Pair

Pair with: The Insight-to-Action Split

Grant separates generation from evaluation. Gottlieb rewrites the internal narrator running the evaluation in the first place.

How people ran this

Used this before a portfolio review. Sat with the dread for 8 minutes, then opened Figma and just shipped the worst version. Got the best feedback of my year.

Maya, product designer

Ran it during a planning week when I kept rewriting the same doc. Three rough versions in 15 minutes — my staff eng picked the one I least liked.

Jordan, eng manager

I'm a chronic deleter. The 'name the feeling' step was the unlock. It was almost always shame, not perfectionism.

Anon

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