# The more you polish, the harder it gets to change your mind
Delivery · diagnostic · https://build-here.africa/book/chapters/05-03-the-more-you-polish-the-harder-it-gets-to-change-your-mind.html

## The symptom

You keep improving a solution. An important question about its use is still open, and each round of polish brings the answer no closer.

## The signal

Show it now, with just enough finish for people to understand it.

## What's going on

The more you invest in a version, the harder it gets to hear it is the wrong one. After three weeks of polish, "this isn't what we need" is unbearable to hear. After two hours of draft, it is useful feedback.

Separate what tests the idea from what can wait. You are preparing a welcome guide for people joining the team. Before working on the layout, have the next person who joins read and try one route through it. Legible instructions are necessary; a visual identity is not, yet. When a rough version takes an hour to make, polishing it before you show it is wasted time.

Show it to people who will actually use it. Say what is provisional. People forgive an honest draft; they do not forgive a finished version that misses their need.

Choose the sign of success before you show it. For a repeated task, it is people coming back. For a one-off sign-up, it is the first successful use. A number chosen after the fact always flatters.

## Check this

Pick the open question. Prepare the roughest version that can answer it, and show it to three people this week.

Watch what they do and where they get stuck. Then decide: improve, check another way, or stop. Write down why.

## To discuss

What are we polishing right now before showing it to anyone?