MVP: Your Most Valuable Practice

Over the past year and a half, I've studied a field at the intersection of design and technology: UX or user experience design. And as someone who loves to live her life "a la carte," I incorporate best practices from various schools of thought.

I want to share with you a practice from UX design that you can start using to help you break free from analysis paralysis and make progress more quickly!

MVP doesn't stand for the most valuable player in this regard, although it would be stellar for you to want to be that in your life. In UX design, MVP stands for "minimum viable product." An MVP is a version of the product with just enough features to interest early adopters, who can then use the product and provide valuable feedback for its subsequent iterations.

You can implement this mentality whenever you have to send a version of yourself out into the digital world. Think resume, dating profile, blog posts, etc. Stop trying to achieve perfection and start sending out your minimum viable product!

The conflicting nature of the digital world is that we often strive for perfection and even hold ourselves back in an environment that allows for modification.

Design thinking teaches us that unique products, in this case, yourself, are not a one-and-done. Iteration is part of the process. Iteration means that from the beginning, you understand you'll have to rework this product. This thinking significantly cuts down on overthinking.

And before you beat yourself up, recognize that sometimes you'll have to update your product, not because it isn't good enough but because external factors have changed.

So the next time you find yourself going round and round in your head, remember the letters MVP. Then put it into practice by committing to putting something out there!