Would it help?

I recently watched the movie Bridge of Spies with one of my favorite actors Tom Hanks. In the film, Hanks plays a lawyer who is tasked with defending an accused Soviet spy in the United States.

One of the scenes that stuck with me was when they were in the court room and Hank’s character asks his client “Do you never worry?” right after telling his client how badly the defense was going, to which the accused spy replied “Would it help?”.

As of this writing, I am a few days away from releasing Pingly to our beta users. The culmination of a couple years work, some unexpected events and a 1 year break from tech.

As the launch inches closer, the battle against thoughts of worry becomes more prevalent. Thoughts of: Does it have enough features to launch? Will people even like it? How many bugs are there that I don’t even know about? Will it just fail miserably?

Now, after seeing the movie, I counteract those thoughts with “Would it help?”. Would it help to worry? I have to launch at some point, I need users to validate the idea and I need them to guide Pingly to what’s really useful.

So stop worrying, it’s not helping! Replace worry with action and positive thoughts. Worried about not having enough features? Test it with some friends or alpha users. Worried about people not liking it? Well you gotta launch it at some point to find out!

In the end just do the best you can and get it out there. And if you start to worry just say to yourself: “Would it help?”