This is a phrase I often tell people and it is a criterion I apply to purchases and creating.
We all want the stuff we want right now.
We want it to be great.
We want it to be free. Or at least cheap.
But that is pretty much impossible.
And when we are creating something – art or a business, we want the process to be quick. We want to always make the highest quality product. And we don’t want to spend any money making it. Or as little as possible.
But it never works out that way. Which seems weird given the reality we now live in in the 21st Century.
We can get things faster than ever before. We can get things of such high quality that people from 100 years ago would have thought it magic.
And stuff is cheaper than ever before, much of it even free. The problem is getting all three. It seems there are always trade-offs.
Quality workmanship takes time and experience. Which you have to pay for and therefore isn’t cheap or fast.
For example, an experienced electrician can run a new circuit safely, and well, in an hour.
It would take you, DIYing it, all day. You can get fast and good, but not cheap. DIY it and you get cheap and good, but it takes more time.
When we want to make something we see the same thing.
Recently had a discussion with a business owner friend about running a Facebook Ad campaign. My friend could hire someone who’d get the campaign up quickly, and targeted correctly, but it wouldn’t be cheap.
Or they could do it themselves, saving them money, but it would take time to learn how to do it right. Or they could just throw something up there, which would be fast and cheap, but probably not accomplish their goals.
Which of course in the case of running ads you are paying for would also make it not cheap.
Sometimes you don’t even get 2. If you go cheap you may not get quality or speed.
You may think you are but in the long run, fixing your mistakes makes it expensive. Well, this is a simple concept with a lot of applications.
Question Of the Day: What are your examples of Fast, Good, Cheap?
