How can thingness kick you into high gear?

Productization is the process of taking something conceptual and theoretical and making it tangible and concrete so it can be exploited and monetized.

This process is gratifying and terrifying. On one hand, watching your vision go out of the realm of possibility and into reality can be a creative thrill like no other. Suddenly there’s a thingness, this quality or state of objective existence or reality to your work, and you’re in awe.

Holy crap, you say to yourself, my idea is like, a thing now. It’s no longer an abstract concept, it’s sharp and tangible. It’s real.

Have you ever had that experience of physical gratification in your work before? It’s deeply motivating. Talk about giving yourself a burst of momentum.

I remember the first time my software was published into its staging environment. We were still a few months from launch, but the test site had a thingness that kicked us into high gear. Now it was crystal clear where the design flaws were, how the content needed to flow, and which technical features were unnecessary.

There was much to do before going live, but the snowball was rolling down the hill and gaining volume and velocity with each revolution, and we were as giddy as drunken men.

Which brings us to the terrifying part. Because anytime one of your ideas becomes a thing, the fear amplifies. Your vulnerability skyrockets in direct proportion with the level of soul and spirit you’ve invested in the work.

Howard Roark, the great favorite fictional architect who refuses to compromise, gives an inspiring speech on this issue:

Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn’t borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul, zits maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.

With that ethos, how could the artist not be scared once that building was erected? This is the price we pay when we bring our ideas to form. Now that our work is a living, breathing unit of objective reality, we become protective of it.

Customers are going to have opinions about our product, and they won’t always be positive. And to a certain degree, we’re going to have to listen to at least some of them to give it the best probability of success.

After all, the market is stronger, righter and more powerful than we are. It’s frustrating as hell and totally unfair, but it’s part and parcel of the innovation journey.

Once our thing goes live and gets real, our level of control reduces with each new customer we acquire.

The good news is, both the gratifying and terrifying aspects of productization are meaningful. We learn and grow from every part of the process.

And if our goal is to scale our talents and have a greater impact on the world, then this exactly what it takes.

How does the thingness of your work give you more momentum?