Never give yourself one option

Lee Unkrich had just won the Oscar. So why couldn't he sleep?

Toy Story 3 had made $1.06 billion. Now the world was waiting for his next original idea, and the pressure had him frozen. Every concept he touched felt like it had to be perfect, which meant none of them could breathe.

Pixar's fix was counterintuitive: more work, split three ways. They had him fully develop and pitch three completely different films at the same time.

The jitters vanished. With three ideas alive, no single one had to carry his whole career. When one hit a wall, his brain had somewhere to escape to, and the logjam cleared. One of those three pitches became Coco: $807 million, and his second Oscar.

Never give yourself one option

One idea is a hostage situation. You'll defend its flaws, sunk-cost your way past every warning sign, and grip it tighter as it dies.

The design firm IDEO builds the antidote into everything: teams prototype several options in parallel, always, because parallel bets kill preciousness. Comparison exposes a weak idea painlessly. Devotion hides it expensively.

"If you aren't experiencing failure, you are making a far worse mistake: being driven by the desire to avoid it." — Ed Catmull

Starting something big? Develop three versions to the same depth before committing to any of them.

One idea owns you. Three ideas work for you.

— Dan

P.S. Are you gripping a single idea right now? Ask yourself what your other two options would be.