How Do You Know it’s a Boat?
There’s only one test that matters for a boat. What’s the “one test” for your project?
What is a boat? Wikipedia offers some technical and historical information. Sure, it probably needs a hull and a keel and all those things. But is that enough?
What if you constructed a boat-shaped object in your garage. You carefully selected the perfect timber for each section, then painstakingly put it all together. With expertise and craft and love and patience, you make this thing, in the shape of a boat. It looks beautiful, all nicely painted. It’s properly waterproofed. All the measurements are correct. It’s perfect.
But what makes it a boat? I think there is only one true test.
Does it float?
No matter how long you’ve spent planning, building, honing, adjusting and perfecting your craft, there is only one way to know for sure whether in fact it works. And that is to launch it.
Because no matter what it looks like, if it sinks, it’s no use to anyone.
So I would suggest that an object, sitting proud and dry in your garage is not a boat at all until it has hit the water and stayed above it. In fact, you could say that a pile of logs loosely tied, that carries a couple of kids down the river is more a boat than the expertly crafted but yet unwet object sitting in the garage. Sure, the logs could be improved, but if they’re carrying those kids, at least they’ve passed the first critical test. Beyond that it’s all subjective.
What really matters?
Of course, I’m not really talking about boats. I’m no old salty sea dog.
But I do have a couple of projects in the garage (and the back of my head) that haven’t hit the water yet.
This is a note to my future self really. A reminder that…
Any project, art, business or other—no matter how beautiful and perfect it seems in the garage/back of the head—is not real until you launch it.
Doesn’t it make sense to get said project, art, business or other into the water as soon as possible? To find out as early as possible if it will float? Isn’t it better to find out early that your hull is a bit dodgy, before you spend all that time on the hand embroidered cushions?
Easy to say. Harder to do.
For some reason, we love an epic launch. We love to get it all perfect and shiny so we have that big impact on launch day. We imagine the boat sliding elegantly down into the water, the champagne smashing across the bow.
What a spectacle. What a shame, if that’s the day you find out you left a few screws loose.
Oops.
